A Geneva court on Wednesday acquitted Tarek Ramadan, an Islamic scholar and grandson of Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, of rape and coercion to have a sexual relationship, ruling that there was no evidence against him.
The accusations against him by a Swiss convert to Islam by the canton of Geneva relate to rape at a Geneva hotel in 2008, Ramadan, 60, has denied the accusations from the outset.
The court fined the prosecutor the canton of Geneva 151,154 Swiss francs (400,<> euros) in damages for Ramadan.
As the verdict was pronounced in a hall packed with journalists, the 60-year-old Swiss preacher smiled and hugged one of his daughters. The 57-year-old complainant left the room before the judgement was read.
Ramadan is being tried in similar cases before the French judiciary, but denies any sexual act and says he is the victim of "political intrigue".
Ramadan holds a doctorate from the University of Geneva, where he wrote a thesis on the founder of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, Hassan al-Banna, his maternal grandfather.
He was Professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom until November 2017 and a guest professor at several universities in Morocco, Malaysia, Japan and Qatar.
Ramadan is popular in European Muslim circles but is particularly controversial among secularists who see him as a supporter of political Islam.