PARIS (AFP) - A French court has ordered the release from police custody of a former legal adviser to disgraced former world athletics head Lamine Diack, his lawyers said on Monday.

Habib Cisse was placed behind bars earlier this month as part of a French investigation into corruption linked to state-sponsored doping of Russian athletes.

Cisse, 41, was put under investigation in November 2015 for corruption along with Diack and Gabriel Dolle, a former anti-doping doctor for the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF).

"His provisional detention was completely unjustified," his lawyers Louis-Marie de Roux and Cedric Labrousse told AFP after successfully appealing against his incarceration, insisting he was not a flight risk.

Diack, who headed the IAAF from 1999 to 2015, found himself at the centre of a maelstrom that blew track and field's governing body apart.

French police have charged Diack with corruption on suspicion the Senegalese accepted bribes to cover up doping cases in Russia.

He was also charged with money laundering and conspiracy. Cisse, a lawyer by profession, is suspected of playing a key role in the scandal.

Eliane Houlette, head of France's financial prosecution department, said in January that all three men had admitted covering up positive Russian drug tests.