TARIQ RAMADAN. Tariq Ramadan could return to prison if the requisitions pronounced against him in a trial in Switzerland for rape were to be followed.
Five years later, will Tariq Ramadan return to prison? Accused once again of raping a woman, the Islamologist could again be sent behind bars, as was already the case in 2018 after his indictment in another case where he is also accused of rape. On May 15 and 16, 2023, the sexagenarian appeared before the court in Geneva, Switzerland, responsible for trying a case opposing him to a woman named “Brigitte” (assumed first name), who claimed to have been beaten and raped in a hotel room in the same city, in 2008. According to her, this grandson of one of the founders of the Muslim Brotherhood forced her to have sexual intercourse, with violence. He denies the facts altogether.
However, after the hearing of the two parties, the first prosecutor of the court considered that the elements collected made it possible to establish Tariq Ramadan’s guilt in this case. “He acted to satisfy his sexual desire for a woman he used as an object. He did not hesitate to make this nightmare last for several hours”, justified the magistrate. The latter thus required three years in prison, including a year and a half firm. The court’s decision has not yet been rendered, with oral arguments taking place on Wednesday. If the requisitions were to be confirmed, Tariq Ramadan would go to prison in Switzerland because the adjustment of sentences, in particular via the electronic bracelet, is only possible in the country for maximum sentences of one year in prison.
The Islamologist Tariq Ramadan, whose trial opened on Monday May 15, is accused by a woman of a rape, which was allegedly committed fifteen years ago in a hotel in Geneva. The man is therefore judged in this city. On the first day of the trial, he spoke out and tried to discredit the complainant, a Swiss woman who calls herself Brigitte (this is an assumed name) and who wears a wig to conceal her identity. The Muslim preacher is indicted in other similar cases in France. In these cases, he has also served preventive prison time.
The trial of Tariq Ramadan, which has just opened, has some surprises in store since Dieudonné was called to testify in court by the preacher’s defense. Dieudonné will be heard as a witness on Tuesday, May 16. Two weeks earlier, an anonymous letter arrived at the Geneva court. The sender claims that Brigitte told him about her night in detail, in the presence of Dieudonné, reports Le Point. During this exchange, the complainant would not have described rape, but rather a “one-night stand”, according to Me Guerric Canonica, lawyer for Tariq Ramadan.
Accused of wanting to “play the clock” (the facts will be prescribed in October 2023), the theologian assured that he wanted to be acquitted on the expected date of the verdict, May 24. “I am here to answer because I want justice to be done,” he said in the preamble. Because in his eyes, “the complainant’s primary objective was my moral fall.” An introduction after which the 60-year-old Swiss unfolded his story. With a guideline: for him, “there was no sex.”
The respondent has, throughout the hearing, rejected the charges against him as a whole, bringing in turn towards the alleged victim. “She was the one watching me on social media. She texted me 40 times before she saw me on the night of the incident. She told me I was hot and that she liked me. She was the one who offered me a coffee”, he lists, while the origin of the case is based on a coffee proposal made by Tariq Ramadan to this woman. It was October 28, 2008. Initially, the complainant and the respondent had met at a book signing, before seeing each other again at a conference. This is how the contact was established between the two.
A third meeting therefore takes place in a café in Geneva. The discussion drags on into the evening, to the point that the two are turned away by the receptionist. This is where the versions differ. The exchange would have continued in the hotel room where Tariq Ramadan resides, near the cafe. Her accuser claims to have been raped then, when she denies everything: “If there had been a fight in this room, it would have been heard.” And to add: “If I had had a sexual relationship with the Swiss plaintiff, with what is known today of my practices, why would I deny it?”
Over the course of his answers, Tariq Ramadan claimed to have been “trapped”, saying that the account of the Swiss woman stuck to the accounts of his other accusers in France. “What made me agree to meet her is that she is seductive, intelligent. […] She is a woman who writes to a man: ‘I love you, I like you'” , he explained, presenting the accuser as “a woman in love, who will feel rejected.” He, in any case, affirms it: “I rejected it.”
A speech that did not convince the prosecutor. “We are not harassed by twenty Facebook messages. He could ignore them” and adds that “it is Tariq Ramadan who asks the question: ‘What would you like?’, who asks: ‘Is it Do you miss me?’ The unsaid is clear. He knows from there that a sexual relationship is possible.”
