Tariq Ramadan in March 2016. -

UGO AMEZ / SIPA

Already indicted in France for the rapes of four women he contests, Tariq Ramadan was confronted with his Swiss accuser on Wednesday at the Paris court in the presence of the Geneva prosecutor.

While it is forbidden by justice to leave French territory since his release from prison, the Swiss intellectual has already been questioned for the first time in July in this procedure parallel to the French investigations, in the presence of the Swiss magistrate.

Hearing delayed by a few hours because of water damage

Tariq Ramadan, 58, and the complainant, a 54-year-old woman, were summoned at 10 a.m. to be heard together by two French investigating judges in the presence of the Swiss prosecutor.

But significant water damage observed early in the morning on the 19th floor of the new court, inaugurated in 2018 at Porte de Clichy, in the north-west of the capital, resulted in the evacuation of the offices of the investigating judges.

Finally, the hearing was able to start around 1 p.m., according to the lawyers.

The complainant, nicknamed "Brigitte" in the media, had filed a rape complaint in Geneva on April 13, 2018, two months after the provisional imprisonment of the Islamologist in the French case.

Facts that date back more than ten years

This woman reported having been raped and kidnapped by Tariq Ramadan during a meeting in a hotel in Geneva on October 28, 2008. "It is a test for my client to be confronted with him ten years after the fact", a declared one of his lawyers, Me François Zimeray, "especially since she is regularly the subject of threats", in particular on social networks.

In July, Tariq Ramadan acknowledged the existence of this meeting, but denied any sexual relationship, according to a member of his entourage.

Since February 2018, the Muslim intellectual has been indicted in France for "rape" and "rape of a vulnerable person", for facts denounced by two complainants, Henda Ayari and "Christelle", respectively in 2012 in Paris and in 2009 In Lyon.

Two new indictments, for suspicion of rape of two other women, in 2015 and 2016, were pronounced last February.

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