WADA's Malaysian anti-doping lab gave false positives.

Egyptian international footballer Hossam Ghaly and an American female marathon runner were falsely suspected of doping because of a Malaysian laboratory’s mistakes, according to a Court of Arbitration for Sport ruling.

Ghaly was among three Middle East-based players who served suspensions because the World Anti-Doping Agency-accredited lab in Penang wrongly reported positive tests for the steroid nandrolone, the ruling said.

The American runner, who’s not identified in the document, avoided a ban because athletics’ world governing body and United States anti-doping officials didn’t trust her test results. The lab failed to consider the possible effects of a birth control pill on her urine sample, the CAS report reveals.

The court panel of three lawyers on Wednesday dismissed the Malaysian testing centre’s appeal against being stripped of its accreditation by WADA.

The lab’s mistakes demonstrated a “serious lack of competence,” the ruling said. “Its errors had the propensity to cause harm. But for the initiatives of the athletes, and the investigations of other laboratories, the errors would not have been unmasked and the athletes’ careers interrupted, if not terminated.”

Ghaly, a former player with Tottenham and Feyenoord, was with Saudi Arabian club Al-Nassr in February 2010 when the lab reported a positive test for nandrolone. He challenged the analysis but served a one-month ban before his innocence was proved by the WADA lab in Cologne, Germany.

The German lab also helped clear the unnamed US runner of a false positive from a December 2009 sample collected in Singapore.