CAS's refusal to reverse ban on Russian Paralympic team "political": Russian Sports Minister

Russian Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko said Tuesday that the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) had adopted a "political decision" rejecting Russian appeal on non-admission of the country' s athletes to the Rio Paralympics.

"The ruling is not in the legal field. It is more political than legal. There are no reasons for the refusal, but it happened," the TASS news agency quoted Mutko as saying.

Earlier on Tuesday, the CAS said in a statement that it had dismissed the appeal filed by the Russian Paralympic Committee (RPC) against the decision of the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) to suspend RPC' s membership.

The IPC took the decision to suspend Russia from participating in the September 7-18 Games following the publication of the McLaren Report and additional information it has since received from the report's author.

The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) published the independent McLaren Investigation Report on July 18, which said Russian State manipulated the doping control process and recommended IOC to ban the participation of the entire Russian team in the Rio Olympic Games.

But IOC refused to yield and left it up to individual sports associations to decide on the Russian participation. After that 278 Russian athletes have been cleared for the Rio 2016 Olympics.

(APD)