A Swiss appeals court on Tuesday convicted Islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan of raping and sexually forcing a woman into a Geneva hotel 15 years ago, overturning a lower court's acquittal last year.
AFP Reports The court said it “set aside the verdict of May 24, 2023” and sentenced the former Oxford University professor to three years in prison, two of which are suspended.
The Swiss-born Ramadan, 62, is the grandson of the founder of Egypt's Islamist movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, and wrote his doctoral thesis on his ancestors.
Namer Time Magazine Ramadan, who was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2004 for his influence on European Muslims, has courted controversy throughout his intellectual career.
FILE/Islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan (centre) leaves a court in Geneva flanked by his lawyers Theo Badan (left) and Yael Hayat on May 24, 2023, after he was acquitted at the end of his trial of charges of “rape and sexual coercion” in an incident dating back 15 years. (FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP via Getty Images)
In a parallel case in Switzerland, which has now been completed, a Paris appeals court ruled in June that Ramadan should stand trial for raping three women between 2009 and 2016, but his lawyers are challenging the verdict.
The academic was held in pretrial detention for more than nine months in 2018, but was released in November of that year.
Ramadan said that despite many of his accusers' allegations of slapping, choking and non-consensual sex, he never engaged in “any act, behaviour or sexual activity that was not discussed beforehand” with the women.
The U.S. government considered ASP to be a group that funds terrorism by donating a portion of its donations to Hamas, an anti-Israel terrorist organization banned in the United States.
As reported by Breitbart News, Ramadan's supporters have previously taken to social media networks to claim that the sexual assault allegations are all part of a global “Zionist conspiracy.”
