A second judo player has withdrawn from the Olympic Games ahead of a scheduled match with an Israeli opponent, officials in Tokyo said on Monday.
Sudan’s Mohamed Abdalrasool pulled out of his second-round match in the -73-kg category against Israeli Tohar Butbul.
No reason was given for this.
Abdalrasool should have met Algeria’s Fethi Nourine in the first round but Nourine scratched ahead of the match in order to avoid a potential meeting with Butbul.
The International Judo Federation (IJF) suspended the 30-year-old Nourine, who was quoted as telling Algerian television: “We worked a lot to reach the Olympics.
“But the Palestinian cause is bigger than all this.”