Jeunesse Sportive de Kabylie (JSK) v. Confederation of African Football (CAF)

On 23 August 2014, JS Kabylie's Cameroonian striker Albert Ebossé Bodjongo — the previous season's Algerian league top scorer and, by his agent's account, on the verge of a national team call-up and interest from European clubs — scored his team's goal in a 2-1 home defeat to USM Alger at the Stade du 1er Novembre 1954 in Tizi Ouzou. After the match, he was struck and killed by an object thrown from the crowd; CAF's own statement attributed his death to a trauma from a sharp object causing internal bleeding, though a later autopsy conducted after his body was returned to Cameroon reportedly raised questions about that account, a discrepancy that was never fully resolved in the public record.

In the immediate aftermath, Algerian domestic authorities imposed a series of escalating sanctions on JSK: the club's home stadium was closed pending investigation, JSK was ordered to play its home league matches outside Tizi Ouzou province, and its own supporters were later barred from attending matches, home or away. Separately, and later, CAF's Executive Committee went further: on 9 October 2014, it banned JSK outright from CAF club competitions for the 2015 and 2016 seasons, invoking a strict-liability approach to crowd violence resulting in death. JSK immediately appealed that specific ban to CAS.

In its final award of 11 February 2015, CAS ruled in JSK's favour, finding that the disciplinary proceedings CAF's own authorities had conducted did not comply with CAF's own rules: the challenged decision had been taken without JSK's representatives ever being heard, or even informed that a disciplinary procedure was under way against the club at all. CAS annulled the ban in full, though CAF remained free to reopen the matter through a properly conducted process.

By the time the ban was overturned, its practical effect had already been felt: MC El Eulma had taken JSK's place representing Algeria in the 2015 CAF Champions League. The case remains a durable, still-cited precedent on procedural fairness in African football governance — a reminder that even a sanction responding to a genuine tragedy, and resting on a legitimate strict-liability principle, cannot stand if the body imposing it never gave the sanctioned party a chance to be heard.