Paris (AFP)

The Swiss Islamologist Tariq Ramadan, already indicted for two rapes, is facing a new complaint in France, for a rape meeting in 2014, which could lead to further prosecution and threaten his freedom found after months in prison .

This new procedure led the Paris prosecutor's office to issue on July 26 a suppletive indictment in the investigation against the Muslim scholar for "rape in meetings" and "threats or acts of intimidation to determine a victim not to complain or to retract ", was learned Sunday from judicial source, confirming information from the Journal du Dimanche and Europe 1.

It is now up to the examining magistrates in charge of the investigation to pronounce or not a new indictment for these facts, and possibly to ask a judge of freedoms and detention (JLD) the revocation of its judicial control, ordered in November after almost ten months in prison.

According to the JDD and Europe 1, this complaint was filed at the end of May by "a woman, now in her fifties, who was working as a radio journalist". She accuses the Muslim intellectual rape meeting with "a person of his staff" during a meeting for an interview on May 23, 2014 in the hotel room of Mr. Ramadan, Sofitel Lyon.

"It went very quickly, it was of an incredible violence," said the plaintiff to justice, according to statements cited by the JDD and Europe 1, recounting having been raped several times by the two men. While threatening Mr. Ramadan to file a complaint before leaving the hotel room, he said, "you do not know how powerful I am."

According to the complaint, the woman was also contacted by Mr. Ramadan on the Messenger application on January 28, 2019 - two months after being released from prison - claiming that he wanted to make a "proposal", "on the plan professional "message to which she would not have replied.

- "ill-intentioned ideas" -

She says that the next day she received a visit from two men. "They told me that Tariq Ramadan tried to reach me [?] And if I had the ill-intentioned ideas they could fix it," she said.

This influential and controversial figure of European Islam is already accused by three women in France and another in Switzerland.

Since February 2018, he is indicted for two rapes, including one vulnerable person, accusations he contests: in October 2009 in Lyon on a woman nicknamed Christelle in the media and, in spring 2012 in Paris, on an old Salafist became secular activist, Henda Ayari.

For the third complaint, he is currently placed under the intermediate status of assisted witness.

In mid-November, the preacher, who suffers from multiple sclerosis, was released under judicial supervision with a ban on leaving French territory. He had to pay a deposit of 300,000 euros and return his Swiss passport.

On March 19, the Paris Court of Appeal upheld the indictments he wanted to see lifted, pointing to his desire to "hide the reality" of his relations with his accusers. Indeed, after having denied for months all sexual relations with his accusers, he had turned around in the fall and pleaded "consented" relations.

Mr Ramadan, who will have 57 years Monday, must also be heard in the autumn in Paris by a Swiss prosecutor for possible indictment in the investigation opened in Switzerland.

Contacted by AFP, Mr. Ramadan's lawyer was unreachable Sunday at midday.

© 2019 AFP