Paris (AFP)

Papa Massata Diack, former marketing advisor to the International Athletics Federation (IAAF), chaired by his father Lamine Diack, asked for the postponement of their trial for corruption on doping background in Russia, which begins Monday in Paris, his Senegalese lawyers unable to move due to the closure of the borders, we learned on Thursday from several sources.

"I will ask for the referral. Mr. Diack has three counsel, two of them cannot come and these are his historical lawyers," confirmed his lawyer in Paris, Antoine Beauquier, who will be present before the 32nd correctional chamber of the Paris court.

This request will be reviewed Monday at the start of the hearing.

Absent on January 13, when the trial opened for the first time to be immediately postponed for procedural problems, Papa Massata Diack has lived in Dakar since the start of the case in November 2015. He was never heard by French investigating judges who deplored Senegal's lack of judicial cooperation in this resounding case.

In the midst of suspicion and targeted by an international arrest warrant, "PMD" ended up being heard on November 7, 2019 by a Dakar judge as part of a letter rogatory issued in May 2016 by French judges, while the investigation was already over.

Lamine Diack, who presided over the IAAF from 1999 to 2015, and his son, are suspected of having implemented a system of corruption from the end of 2011 to allow Russian athletes suspected of doping to escape from disciplinary proceedings, in exchange for power funds in Moscow and to facilitate negotiations with a Russian sponsor and broadcasters, in preparation for the 2013 World Athletics Championships in Moscow.

This case was at the origin of a scandal of larger scale on the institutional doping in Russia between 2011 and 2015. Four other people are summoned by the French justice from Monday: one of the former advisers of Lamine Diack , lawyer Habib Cissé, former head of the IAAF anti-doping service, Gabriel Dollé, former president of the Russian Athletics Federation, Valentin Balakhnitchev, and former national trainer of long-distance running in Russia, Alexei Melnikov.

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