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Shoaib Akhtar and Mohammad Asif have been acquitted by the tribunal appointed to review their drug ban appeal. The decision was made two to one with Hasib Ahsan and Justice Fakhruddin Ebrahim in favour of the acquittal.
"This appeal committee [therefore] holds that Shoaib Akhtar and Mohammad Asif will not be deemed to have committed a doping offence," Ibrahim said. "The ban and punishment imposed by the earlier tribunal is hereby set aside as being contrary to the provision of laws."
Ibrahim said the committee found it was "clearly, plainly evident that Shoaib Akhtar nor Mohammad Asif were ever warned or cautioned against taking supplements." Neither player was "even provided with any international or local publication warning them against the use supplements," the committee was quoted by AFP. It was the committee's "considered view that Shoaib Akhtar and Mohammad Asif have successfully established that they had an honest and reasonable belief that the supplements ingested by them did not contain any prohibited substances".
Shoaib, banned for two years, and Asif, for one year, appealed after they were found guilty for testing positive for the banned anabolic steroid nandrolone in dope tests that were internally conducted by the PCB at the end of September.
The lawyers of the two players presented arguments before the tribunal headed by Justice Fakhruddin G Ebrahim and including Hasib Ahsan, a former Test player, and Dr Danish Zaheer, the president of the Pakistan Sports Medicine Federation. Shoaib and Asif were twice made to fill out questionnaires sent by the members of the tribunal regarding their use of the drug.
The original tribunal which had imposed the ban was chaired by barrister Shahid Hamid and included Intikhab Alam, the former Pakistan captain, and Waqar Ahmed, a doping expert. The ICC had applauded that decision, saying that it was an appropriate deterrent where the threat of drugs to cricket was concerned. "It is a good judgement, well written, very professionally done and they have made constant reference to the guidelines laid down in the PCB's anti-doping code,"Percy Sonn, the ICC president had said 👏 .
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