The Paris prosecutor’s office on Tuesday July 13 requested a trial at the assizes for the Tariq Ramadan case, the Swiss Islamologist being accused of rape by four women between 2009 and 2016. He is accused of ” rape ” with regard to three plaintiffs and ” vulnerable person rape for a fourth. The final decision in a trial at the assizes rests with the two investigating judges in charge of the case.
The case that caused the fall of Tariq Ramadan starts in October 2017. Henda Ayari, an ex-Salafist who has become a secular activist, and another woman nicknamed “Christelle” file a complaint against him, respectively denouncing a rape in 2012 in Paris and one in 2009 in Lyon. He was indicted in February 2018 and imprisoned for 10 months in Fleury-Mérogis prison.
In this emblematic file of the #MeToo era, Tariq Ramadan first denies having had extramarital sex. Then he concedes, in front of the photos and messages that the investigators found in his computer, ” dominance relationships “rough, but” granted “.
In February, then October 2020, the 59-year-old Islamologist is indicted for three out of three rapes other potential victims. And last April, an expert concluded to a psychological grip of Tariq Ramadan on the plaintiffs, with regard to the admiration, even the veneration on the part of the latter.
For the prosecution, consenting to a sexual relationship does not mean ” consent to be abused, hit, sodomized, to the point of being reduced to an object devoid of any consent “.