(Sep. 11, 2024 / JNS) A Geneva appeals court has found Tariq Ramadan, the Swiss-born Islamic scholar—and grandson of the late Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood founder, Hassan al-Banna—guilty of rape, overturning an earlier acquittal, the regional government announced on Tuesday.
The ruling—issued on Aug. 28 and made public on Tuesday—sentenced Ramadan to three years in prison, one of which must be served, over an Oct. 2008 rape and other violent sex acts in a Geneva hotel room.
The victim, a woman whom Ramadan met at a book signing, said she was raped and subjected to “torture and barbarism” by the author.
The court “found that several testimonies, certificates, medical notes and opinions of private experts aligned with the complainant’s testimony,” the Geneva regional government said on Tuesday.
The appeal verdict overturning Ramadan’s acquittal was said to rely on “witness testimony, certificates, medical notes and private expert opinions consistent with the facts presented by the plaintiff.”
The victim, who was in her 40s at the time of the sexual assault, filed a complaint in 2018, telling the court she felt encouraged to tell her story after similar criminal charges were filed against Ramadan in France.
In June, a Paris appeals court ruled that Ramadan should face charges for allegedly raping three women between 2009 and 2016. His lawyers have appealed that decision, and Ramadan denies all accusations.
One accuser, Henda Ayari, told local television that Ramadan “pounced on me like a wild animal” and she thought she “was going to die.”
Ramadan served as a professor of contemporary Islamic studies at the University of Oxford, but was forced to take a leave of absence in 2017, shortly before he was briefly taken into custody by French authorities.
In 2006, Ramadan was denied entry into the United States due to his financial support for the French-based Committee for Charity and Aid to Palestinians, a French organization with links to Hamas terrorists.
