Islamologist Tariq Ramadan acquitted in Switzerland of rape charge

Islamologist Tariq Ramadan was acquitted on Wednesday (May 24th) of the charge of rape and sexual coercion by a Swiss court, which ruled that there was no evidence against him. The complainant immediately announced an appeal.

Islamologist Tariq Ramadan arrives with his lawyers Nabila Asmane (left) and Yaël Hayat, at the Palais de Justice in Geneva on May 24, 2023 © Fabrice Coffrini / AFP

Text by: RFI Follow

Advertising

Read more

The Swiss court acquitted Islamologist Tariq Ramadan, ruling that there was no evidence against him. He will also receive approximately 151,000 Swiss francs (approximately 154,400 euros) in compensation from the State of Geneva.

At the verdict, delivered in a room full of journalists, the Swiss preacher, 60, smiled and was hugged by one of his daughters. In the dock of the civil parties, the complainant, 57 years old, left the room before the end of the reading of the verdict.

The complainant immediately announced an appeal. Three years in prison, half of which were closed, had been requested last week by the Geneva prosecutor.

Two opposing versions

Tariq Ramadan was tried for the first time for rape, but he is threatened with a trial in France for similar offences.

His trial had uncovered two opposing versions of events. The charismatic and contested figure of European Islam denies any sexual act and says he is the victim of a "trap".

A convert to Islam, the complainant, "Brigitte", who chose this pseudonym to protect herself from threats, claims that the Islamologist subjected her to brutal sexual acts accompanied by beatings and insults in the room of the Geneva hotel where he was staying on the night of October 28, 2008.

During the three days of hearings, last week in Geneva, a screen separated them so that she did not have to see him.

"Brigitte", now 57 years old, filed a complaint ten years after the fact, in 2018. She said she was encouraged by the fact that other women did the same against Tariq Ramadan in France.

The two agree that they spent the night together in the hotel room, that she left early in the morning to return home.

Tariq Ramadan assures that it is she who invited herself into his room. He said he let himself be kissed before quickly ending the exchange. A version that denies "Brigitte", who told during the hearing to have been "afraid of dying" under the blows of the Islamologist.

The Geneva prosecutor accused Tariq Ramadan of being guilty of "rape three times" on the same night and "sexual coercion". The complainant sought reimbursement of lawyers' fees and compensation in the amount of 50,000 Swiss francs (51,300 euros).

During the hearing, the defense tried to demonstrate Ramadan's innocence by assuring that there was no scientific evidence. His lawyers also accused "Brigitte" and the women who filed the complaint in France of having forged links with the aim of bringing down the Islamologist.

The complainant's lawyers argued that she had consulted two psychiatrists in the days following the night of October 28, 2008 to tell them the facts and talk to them about her state of stress.

She said during the investigation that she had met the Islamologist during a signing session a few months before the fact, before seeing him again at a conference, then corresponding in an increasingly intimate tone on social networks.

Suspected of raping four women in France

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 Kingdom, and invited to many universities in Morocco, Malaysia, Japan or Qatar.

In France, he is suspected of raping four women between 2009 and 2016, a case that triggered his downfall in 2017. In July, the Paris prosecutor's office requested that he be referred to an assize court and it is up to the investigating judges to order a trial or not. The French case earned him more than nine months of pre-trial detention in 2018.

(With AFP)

>> Read also: Tariq Ramadan, the fall of a once influential figure of Islam in France

Newsletter Receive all the international news directly in your mailbox

I subscribe

Follow all the international news by downloading the RFI application

Read on on the same topics:

• Switzerland
• Justice