France: l'islamologue Tariq Ramadan condamné par défaut à 18 ans de réclusion criminelle
Swiss Islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan was sentenced on Wednesday, March 25, to 18 years in prison by the Paris Criminal Court, which tried him in absentia and behind closed doors for rapes committed against three women.
Tariq Ramadan was found guilty of rape and rape of a vulnerable person. "Consenting to sexual activity is not the same as consenting to any sexual act whatsoever," emphasized the presiding judge, Corinne Goetzmann. She ordered that he be subject to judicial supervision for eight years, prohibiting him from contacting the victims and from publishing any book, audiovisual work, or public statement relating to this offense.
She also sentenced him to a permanent ban from French territory once his sentence has been served and upheld the effects of the arrest warrant issued against him on March 6.
The Egyptian-born Islamic scholar, already convicted by Swiss courts for the rape of a woman, had been on trial in Paris since March 2 for rapes allegedly committed on three other women between 2009 and 2016, which he denies: an aggravated rape, with violence and on a vulnerable person, committed on Christelle - a pseudonym - in Lyon in October 2009; a rape that allegedly took place in 2012 in Paris on Henda Ayari, a former Salafist turned secular activist who triggered the case by filing a complaint in October 2017 and another on a third woman, dating back to 2016.
An arrest warrant "for immediate execution and dissemination"
But at the start of the trial, he did not appear in court. His lawyers explained that he had been hospitalized two days earlier in Geneva, due, according to them, to a "flare-up" of multiple sclerosis.
A court-ordered medical examination concluded that the Islamic scholar's multiple sclerosis, which he had suffered from for several years, was "stable, with no signs of a recent flare-up," and determined that he could therefore appear before the criminal court.
The presiding judge then rejected the request to postpone the trial and ruled that the 63-year-old defendant would be tried in absentia, and behind closed doors, as requested by a civil party. She also indicated that an arrest warrant, "for immediate execution and dissemination," had been issued against him.
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