Tariq Ramadan has a rendezvous this Monday noon among Parisian investigating judges to give them his new version of the facts after the recent revelation of hundreds of SMS exchanged with one of the two women who accuses him of having raped her, nine years ago.

One year after the first rape complaint against Tariq Ramadan, at the beginning of the #MeToo movement, some 399 SMS exhumed from an old phone of the second complainant are now at the heart of the investigation of the Muslim intellectual, incarcerated since his death. indictment on February 2 for rape on two women.

This woman, nicknamed "Christelle" in the media, denounced a rape committed during their only meeting on October 9, 2009 in Lyon, after nine months of relationship at a distance.

However, the Swiss Islamologist 56 years has always denied any physical relationship with this woman.

399 SMS exchanged from August 31 to December 15, 2009

In their confrontation on September 18, Tariq Ramadan conceded only a "game of seduction" and reaffirmed having drunk only one drink with this "mythomaniac" at the bar of the hotel. He then filed a third application for release, which has since been rejected.

Because the following week, its version was contradicted by the submission of an expertise revealing 399 SMS exchanged from August 31 to December 15, 2009 and which testify to a relationship followed and explicit.

In anticipation of their appointment, Tariq Ramadan detailed in advance her sexual fantasies violent and domineering, which are consistent with the initial description of the facts by "Christelle": slaps, punches, hair pulled, humiliation ...

"I felt your embarrassment ... sorry for my" violence "," he acknowledged the next day. "You did not like ... I'm sorry," he wrote later in one of his 255 messages.

"Ramadan system"

But each party now interprets these messages to his advantage: testimony of a relationship granted to the defense, proof of the lies and manipulations of Tariq Ramadan for the civil parties.

"It's the Ramadan system that is coming to light," the lawyer for "Christelle" had responded, hailing a "major turning point" . For Me Eric Morain, these exchanges demonstrate "the hold" exerted on several women and in particular on his client, a recent convert who believed to be getting married soon with this popular figure of French-speaking Islam.

The timestamp of 144 SMS "Christelle" has not been found, the investigation must reconstruct the thread of conversations, which are also mentioned threats and contacts she had tied at this time with opponents of the Islamologist.

In one of these undated messages, "Christelle" writes "I missed you as soon as I walked in" and in another "if I had a bad time, I would be gone" .

Relations with a third complainant

"The real question is whether there was rape and these messages from the civil party clearly say no," said Emmanuel Marsigny, before asking the judges to re-hear his client.

After initially refusing to answer the investigators about his sexuality, Mr. Ramadan admitted in June extramarital affairs and "fiery relations of domination" with former mistresses, at least three of whom testified in the investigation. .

He had also admitted to relations with a third complainant who appeared in March and for which he has not been indicted to date.

Another instruction for rape in Switzerland

As for Henda Ayari, her first accuser whose complaint triggered the case on October 20, 2017, Tariq Ramadan reaffirmed before the judges this summer that she had no physical relationship with her.

Since the beginning of the scandal, the intellectual and his supporters have constantly denounced a "collusion" between the plaintiffs, his political enemies and, henceforth, his former mistresses.

In Switzerland, he is also targeted by a rape instruction, opened mid-September in Geneva after a complaint from a woman filed in April.

He is currently detained at the Fresnes Prison Hospital (Val-de-Marne) because of his multiple sclerosis, the treatment of which was considered compatible with his detention.