Tariq Ramadan sera jugé par défaut à Paris pour viols, un mandat d'arrêt émis à son encontre
Swiss Islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan will be tried for rape in absentia and behind closed doors, the Paris departmental criminal court decided on Friday, issuing an arrest warrant against the accused who has not appeared before French justice since the start of his trial.
"Tariq Ramadan will be tried in absentia," announced the president of the court, Corinne Goetzmann, who rejected the request for postponement of the trial made by the defense of the 63-year-old preacher, considering that he had not offered "any valid excuse" for his absence since Monday.
She indicated that an arrest warrant, "for immediate execution and dissemination", had been issued against her.
Mr. Ramadan's four lawyers then left the courtroom.
"Do we have any other choice but to leave?" one of them, Ouadie Elhamamouchi, told reporters outside the courtroom. "To stay is to accept this travesty of justice," he added, believing that his client was "once again (...) the target of judicial harassment."
Her colleague, Marie Burguburu, considered that the issuance of the arrest warrant constituted "a form of execution" of Mr. Ramadan.
The Islamic scholar did not appear at the opening of his trial on Monday in Paris, having been hospitalized two days earlier in Geneva, Switzerland, due, according to his lawyers, to a "flare-up" of multiple sclerosis.
The president of the criminal court therefore ordered a medical examination based on documents by two designated neurologists to assess her state of health, in order to decide whether or not to postpone the trial to a later date.
In this report, read in court by the magistrate, the experts concluded that the "multiple sclerosis" from which the Islamic scholar has suffered for several years was "stable, with no sign of a recent flare-up", and considered that he could therefore appear before the criminal court.
To support its request for a postponement, Mr. Ramadan's defense sent the court on Friday a letter written by one of Mr. Ramadan's doctors, emphasizing that his patient, who was discharged from the hospital on Thursday, was "drained of his vital energy," and proposing that he observe a "rest period of one to ten days" before appearing in court.
This letter was described by the public prosecutor, Philippe Courroye, as "the last delaying tactic" that the accused was using in the debate.
The prosecution representative deemed no request for referral "acceptable".
In sharp remarks, he denounced Tariq Ramadan's "evasion," saying he had "put a border and Lake Geneva between himself and French justice because he does not want to be judged," and that he was "showing cowardice."
"I wish to solemnly state here that Tariq Ramadan is requesting this trial, wishes to be judged, and in front of all the journalists present, unlike the opposing parties," replied Mr. Elhamamouchi, alluding to the request for a closed hearing by one of the civil parties in the trial.
The court ordered this closed session, which is a right when a victim who is a civil party requests it.
The Islamic scholar, already convicted by the Swiss justice system for the rape of a woman, was supposed to appear in Paris until March 27 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" (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.
He faces up to twenty years in prison.
During the investigation and after his referral to the courts, Tariq Ramadan has launched numerous procedural offensives to demand a resumption of the investigations and to postpone the holding of a trial, arguing that he has new expert reports which he believes prove his innocence.
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