Trump mulls posthumous pardon for Muhammad Ali

WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump said he was considering granting a posthumous pardon to boxing great Muhammad Ali, whose refusal of military service during the Vietnam War made him a champion of the US civil rights and anti-war movements.

Ali, who died in 2016, was convicted of draft evasion in 1967 and sentenced to five years in prison, but the conviction was overturned on appeal by the US Supreme Court in 1971.

“I’m thinking about Muhammad Ali and some others who have sentences that aren’t fair,” Trump said at the White House before heading to Canada for the G7 summit.

Trump described Ali as “not very popular” at the time of his refusal to serve in the military during the Vietnam War.

But while controversial, Ali’s resistance made him a hero to many during a highly polarised period marked by struggles over racial inequality and rising opposition to the US role in the Vietnam War.

A charismatic fighter who won his first world heavyweight title in 1964, Ali was banned from boxing for three years as a result of his conviction but went on to reclaim the championship in a stellar career that lived up to his boast of being “the Greatest”.

A lawyer for Ali’s family, Ron Tweel, said while Trump’s gesture was appreciated, “a pardon is unnecessary”, given that the sentence was overturned. “There is no conviction from which a pardon is needed,” Tweel said in a statement sent to US media.

Trump has wielded his presidential pardon powers recently in ways that appear intended to dramatise his own complaints of being the victim of a “witch hunt”.

Last Sunday, he asserted for the first time his “absolute right” to pardon himself, sparking fierce debate and a warning from Republican House speaker Paul Ryan that no one is above the law.