Swiss writer Tariq Ramadan, grandson of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hasan Al Banna, has been found “guilty of rape and sexual coercion” by the Geneva Criminal Appeals and Review Chamber. The Islamologist was sentenced to three years in prison, of which one year to be served, the Court of Justice said this morning in a press release. The Geneva judges have established that Tariq Ramadan did indeed sexually abuse a woman, one night in October 2008, in a room of a Geneva hotel where a conference was being held. Tariq Ramadan, a Geneva native, now 62, has always denied these accusations. In May 2023, the Geneva Criminal Court acquitted him of these facts.
In its press release, which follows the information revealed by Swiss Radio and Television, the Court of Justice specifies that “the Criminal Appeals and Review Chamber has found that numerous testimonies, certificates, medical notes and opinions of private experts are consistent with the facts reported by the complainant.” The judgment of the Criminal Appeals and Review Chamber can be appealed within 30 days before the Federal Tribunal.
In the first instance, the victim, who is partially disabled after a serious accident and nicknamed “Brigitte” by the media (who we at Panorama interviewed during the trial), stated that “she was afraid of dying under the blows of Tariq Ramadan,” during that night spent in the hotel with him. The woman explained in great detail that Tariq Ramadan “threw her on the bed and straddled her, hitting her in the face.” On appeal, the fifty-year-old indicated that the violence she had suffered had interrupted her relationships with others: “I feel a sense of shame, loss of self-confidence and I have nightmares,” she said. The victim also admitted “to having admired Tariq Ramadan and to having written to him compulsively for a certain period.”
Before the Criminal Appeals and Review Chamber, Tariq Ramadan vehemently contested the accusations made against him by the woman, now 58, claiming that he had never had sexual relations with her: “I am absolutely innocent of everything that is said and everything that I may have done.” The Islamologist explained that “I was approached on social networks by this extremely enterprising woman” and that, driven by curiosity, he offered to meet her. It was once in the hotel with her that Tariq Ramadan said “that he felt as if he had been trapped.” Sexual violence is a recurring theme in Ramadan’s story; In France, the Investigatory Chamber of the Paris Court of Appeal decided, at the beginning of the summer, to refer Tariq Ramadan to the Paris Criminal Court for the rape of three other women, committed between 2009 and 2016.
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