Rwanda banned from AfCON over player's ID

Rwanda have been disqualified from the African Cup of Nations after one of the country’s players was found to have two identities and was using a different name and a Congolese passport when playing for his club team, the Confederation of African Football said.
Caf said on Sunday that the striker Dady Birori was ineligible to play for Rwanda and disqualified the country from the African Nations Cup qualifying competition for fielding him.
Birori, who Caf said is registered as Tady Etekiama when playing for the Congo club AS Vita, was banned pending a hearing on 17 September to decide his sanction. Africa’s top football body said the Congo-born Birori was also using a different date of birth and Congolese nationality in his club documents.
“[We] established that the two identities only referred to a single person,” Caf said.
Caf stripped Rwanda of its victory over Republic of Congo in the second round of African Nations Cup qualifying this month with Republic of Congo now taking its place in the final round of qualifiers. Birori scored a hat-trick when Rwanda eliminated Libya in the first round of qualifying.
He has been playing for Rwanda since 2009 and represented the country in qualifiers for the 2010 and 2014 World Cups, both of which Rwanda failed to qualify for.
Rwanda is the third team to be disqualified in the 2015 African Nations Cup’s qualifying competition. Equatorial Guinea were thrown out for fielding an ineligible player and Gambia was removed after being banned from all competitions for fielding over-age players in a youth tournament. Two other countries, Eritrea and Seychelles, withdrew.
Caf called Birori to Cairo to testify last week before reaching the decision to ban him from all football. The African confederation said it would decide the length of Birori’s ban next month and could “impose additional sanctions if necessary.”
Republic of Congo were reinstated in the African Nations Cup qualifiers and will face the defending continental champions Nigeria, and South Africa and Sudan in Group A. The final round will decide the 15 teams to join the host Morocco at the African Nations Cup finals in January and February.
The Egyptian club Zamalek also reportedly appealed to Caf over Birori’s eligibility after losing out to Kinshasa-based AS Vita for a place in the semi-finals of the African Champions League club tournament.
 Credit: The Guardian