The new lawyer for Tariq Ramadan, indicted for four rapes he challenges, denounced this Wednesday the "opportunistic" use of the concept of "hold", intended according to him to compensate for the weakness of the charges, after two years and half of investigations.
"The notion of control appeared late in the file and opportunistically to compensate for the weakening of the accusations made by the complainants," William Bourdon said in his first speech, AFP after the revelation of the conclusions of a crucial expertise on the subject.
Psychiatric expertise accused
The psychiatrist Daniel Zagury, seized of this question by the three Parisian investigating judges, estimates that the first two accusers of Tariq Ramadan have, partly under "influence", agreed to have intimate relations with the Islamologist but that they did not consent to the sexual acts of "extreme violence" that he subjected them to, according to the conclusions of his expert report.
Since February 2018, the Muslim intellectual is under investigation for "rape" and "rape on vulnerable persons", for the facts denounced by these first complainants, Henda Ayari and "Christelle", respectively in 2012 in Paris and in 2009 in Lyon . Two new indictments, on suspicion of rape of two women, in 2015 and 2016, were announced on February 14.
A “questionable” notion
These women, and several others interviewed by the investigators, had established an erotic correspondence with the Islamologist by electronic means, before sexual encounters of "extreme violence", according to their accounts, convergent. Forced by the investigations to cease to deny these meetings, the Islamologist pleads from now on “relations of domination”, rough but “agreed”.
“There is nothing more questionable than the notion of control. The greatest psychiatrists, the greatest jurists have expressed reservations about this notion ", now invoked" without prudence or discernment "by" fashion effect ", estimates William Bourdon, appointed as the new counsel for the Islamologist alongside Nabila Asmane and Ouadie Elhamamouchi, of the Seine-Saint-Denis bar, to replace Emmanuel Marsigny.
"The experts do not have to decide or not on the consent, it is not their mission", retorts the lawyer, "surprised" that the expert answered "so categorically" to a question which "was not asked of him".
"Humiliating does not mean that there has been rape"
"I am totally in favor of the tremendous, global dynamic of #MeToo", a "tremendous switch to put down patriarchal logics", but "major civic causes sometimes bring windfall effects, instrumentalizations", adds he warns of the risk of going from the “denial” of a woman's speech to that of “her hyper-sacralization”.
For the lawyer, "a woman can find in a story of victimization, a refuge, even a possibility of exposure" or "a possibility of getting away from a scene that she may have felt as a scene of humiliation ”. But "a scene of humiliation does not mean that there has been rape or absence of consent".
Is Tariq Ramadan a victim of anti-Muslim racism, as he claims in his latest book? In the book, he also draws a controversial parallel between his case and the Dreyfus affair, a resounding scandal of the Third Republic mixing judicial error and anti-Semitism.
" Manhunt "
"These words, which are those of Tariq Ramadan, will not be mine," warns Me Bourdon. "I have no reason to believe that he was subjected to deliberate prosecution". However, "no one can dispute that if the same facts were accused today of a great actor of cinema or a great politician, he would never have undergone the extraordinary media treatment that Tariq Ramadan suffered", whose fall also served those who wanted to exploit its "turpitudes" to try a "demonstration of the hypocritical character of Islam".
"We have the right to be shocked by, at a minimum, double talk for a certain period and double life" by Tariq Ramadan, removed from the religious teaching that made him famous. "But there is a dimension of manhunt in this file which is unbearable," adds the lawyer.
"There is a convergence of powerful discharge elements in this case, sometimes documented, sometimes still undocumented, which make me think that one day we will establish (...) the innocence of Tariq Ramadan", he concludes.
Justice
Ramadan affair: The main accusers "under control", according to a psychiatric expert
Society
Tariq Ramadan case: Charged for rape, Islamologist accuses judges of being under "political influence"
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