FREE BIRDS : Doping Ban lifted on Shoaib , Asif

Friends : What’s ur say on this , is this justified…

Pakistani pacers Shoaib Akhtar and Mohammad Asif have been cleared of doping charges by a three-member tribunal.

Justice Fakhruddin G Ebrahim led the tribunal while the other members were former Test player, Hasib Ahsan and Dr Danish Zaheer, the President of the Pakistan Sports Medicine Federation.

Ebrahim and Hasib Ahsan voted in favour of the acquittal while Dr Zaheer was against the giving the duo a clean chit.

Ebrahim said the committee was setting aside the duo’s punishment.

“This appeals committee holds that Shoaib Akhtar and Mohammed Asif cannot be deemed to have committed a doping offense under PCB anti-doping regulations,” Ebrahim said.

"The ban and punishment imposed by the earlier tribunal is hereby set aside as being contrary to the provision of laws," he said

Ebrahim further 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."

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."

"We have exonerated both. We think their defence was under clause 4.5 of Pakistan Cricket Board anti-doping regulations. They have proved their case was of special circumstances and that is explained in clause 4.5. Then it was necessary to exonerate them," Ebrahim added.
Shoaib and Asif were banned for two and one years respectively by a Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) tribunal on November 1 after testing positive for a banned substance Nandrolone.

The tribunal that had banned the duo was headed by barrister Shahid Hamid and the other members of the committee were former Test skipper Intikhab Alam and Waqar Ahmed who is a doping expert.