Swiss justice sentences Tariq Ramadan to one year in prison

Prosecuted in France and Switzerland, the Islamic scholar was acquitted at first instance in Geneva, but has just been sentenced to three years in prison, one of which is firm, on appeal. In France, the procedure is still ongoing and should return to court, after an initial acquittal in October.

Swiss Islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan, accused by several women in Switzerland and France, was sentenced for the first time for the rape of a woman by the Geneva courts, to a three-year prison sentence, one of which is firm. Acquitted by the criminal court at first instance, he was found “guilty of rape and sexual coercion” on the night of October 28 to 29, 2008 in a hotel in Geneva, by the criminal appeal and review chamber, the Geneva courts said on Tuesday. Mr. Ramadan was sentenced to “a three-year custodial sentence, without a one-year suspended sentence,” it added in a press release.

The judgment was notified by mail to the parties because they had waived a public reading. “Our client is of course relieved and realizes what she had to endure for the truth to come out,” said the plaintiff’s Swiss lawyers, Me Véronique Fontana and Me Robert Assaël, affirming that “the truth has finally triumphed.” “This decision was made at the cost of years of pain and hardship that the plaintiff went through with dignity. We have rarely experienced such brutal proceedings,” also said Me François Zimeray, the French lawyer who represented her at first instance. Read Tariq Ramadan: “I am not perfect, but I am innocent” (1/2) The judgment, dated August 28, can be appealed, within 30 days, to the Federal Tribunal, the Supreme Court of the Confederation. “While the law should be clear and court decisions clear, all these contradictions (…) give a feeling of extreme precariousness,” reacted Philippe Ohayon, one of the French lawyers of the Islamologist. The appeal trial was held at the end of May in Geneva. The prosecutor had requested three years in prison, half of which would be firm, and raised the notion of “control” exercised by Tariq Ramadan, 62, compared to a “Stockholm syndrome” in the plaintiff. Tariq Ramadan, a charismatic and controversial figure of European Islam, denies any sexual act and had pleaded for acquittal. A convert to Islam, the plaintiff, “Brigitte” – who goes by this name to protect herself from threats – assured the judges that he had subjected her to brutal sexual acts accompanied by blows and insults in the room of the Geneva hotel where he was staying, on the night of October 28, 2008. The plaintiff had filed a complaint ten years after the events. According to the prosecution, it was the fact that women filed complaints in France in 2017 against the Islamologist that pushed “Brigitte” to do the same in Switzerland.

In France, an appeal examined in October

The complainant had indicated during the investigation that she had met Tariq Ramadan at a book signing session a few months earlier. An increasingly intimate correspondence on social networks followed. The two protagonists claimed before the Geneva judges that they had spent the night together in the hotel room, which she had left early in the morning to return home. But their versions of the facts differ. Tariq Ramadan claimed that he had let himself be kissed before ending the exchange and accused the complainant of wanting revenge for having been “spurned”.

Source:AFP