It’s an iconic case from the days of #MeToo. A figure of European Islam, Tariq Ramadan has gone through the French judicial system on charges of rape and sexual harassment. It is now in Switzerland, his country, that the Islamologist must face justice. This Monday, his trial is being held in Geneva before a criminal court where he is to be tried for “rape and sexual coercion” in a case dating back almost 15 years and which he denies.
The Swiss complainant, who says she lives under threat and therefore wishes to be called under the assumed name of “Brigitte”, was in her forties at the material time. She assures that the Islamologist subjected her to brutal sexual acts accompanied by beatings and insults, on the evening of October 28, 2008, in a hotel room in Geneva. According to the indictment, he was guilty of “rape three times” during the same night and “sexual coercion”, to the point of suffocation. “Rarely have I seen a file so steeped in threats and fear,” said the plaintiff’s French lawyer, François Zimeray, a former diplomat and human rights specialist.
The intellectual risks between 2 and ten years in prison
Tariq Ramadan, 60 years old today and threatened with a lawsuit in France for similar facts, admitted having met her but affirmed during the investigation to have given up having a sexual relationship with her. The Swiss intellectual, charismatic and contested figure of European Islam, risks between 2 and ten years in prison. Reached by AFP, one of his French lawyers, Me Philippe Ohayon, refused to comment before this highly anticipated trial, which should last two to three days.
The judgment will be pronounced on May 24, said the Geneva justice. Tariq Ramadan will be able to appeal. Doctor of the University of Geneva where he wrote a thesis on the founder of the Egyptian Islamist brotherhood of the Muslim Brotherhood who was his grandfather, Tariq Ramadan was professor of contemporary Islamic studies at the University of Oxford in the United United until November 2017 and invited many universities in Morocco, Malaysia, Japan or Qatar.
Suspected of raping four women in France
Popular in conservative Muslim circles, he remains contested, in particular by secularists who see him as a supporter of political Islam. In France, he is suspected of rape committed between 2009 and 2016 on four women, a case which triggered his fall in 2017. The Paris prosecutor’s office requested his referral to the assizes in July and it is up to the investigating judges responsible for the investigations to order a trial or not.
The French file earned him more than nine months of pre-trial detention in 2018 from which he emerged free in November of the same year. He has remained under judicial supervision ever since. Tariq Ramadan is required to reside in France but he benefits from exceptional authorizations to leave French territory to go to Switzerland in the context of the case judged this week in Geneva.