Swiss Islamist Tariq Ramadan was acquitted at first instance and sentenced on appeal in Switzerland to three years’ imprisonment, including one year, for rape and sexual coercion, the Geneva Court of Justice announced on Tuesday 10 September.
In a press release, he announced that “overturns the criminal court’s judgment of 24 May 2023 finding Tariq Ramadan guilty of rape and sexual coercion for almost all of the alleged acts”.
Following this acquittal, the complainant, who called herself “Brigitte” to protect herself from threats, immediately appealed.
Complaint filed in 2018
She claims that Mr. Ramadan subjected her to brutal sexual acts accompanied by beatings and insults in the Geneva hotel room where she was staying on the evening of October 28, 2008. “Brigitte” filed a complaint ten years after the events, in 2018, encouraged, she explained, by the fact that other women had done the same to Tariq Ramadan in France.
Both agree that they spent the night together in the hotel room, from which she left early in the morning to return home. Tariq Ramadan claims that it was she who invited herself into his room.
She said that she let him kiss her before quickly ending the exchange. A version denied by “Brigitte”, who recounted during the first instance hearing that she had “fear of dying” under the blows of the Islamologist.
In France, the Paris Court of Appeal decided on June 27 to bring the 61-year-old Swiss Islamologist before the departmental criminal court for rape of three women, allegedly committed between 2009 and 2016. However, the case was decided on the facts reported by a fourth woman – rapes allegedly committed during 2013.
