Rabat – The French court rejected Tariq Ramadan’s release request, Tuesday, September 25, after new evidence was presented.
Ramadan was asking to be placed under judicial supervision, to be given back his Swiss passport, and to pay bail of €300,000.
The Islamic scholar, who fully denies the charges against him, has been in jail for seven months in France over rape accusations by two complainants.
AFP reported that according to sources close to the case, Ramadan’s version of events was contradicted by an examination his phone and computer. The evidence was handed to the magistrates Monday, September 24.
The intimate messages sent by Tariq Ramadan to the second complainant seem to indicate that the Islamic scholar lied about the nature of their relationship.
Ramadan has repeatedly denied having any kind of relationship with the second complainant. The document shows that he remained in contact with her until December 2009.
However, Ramadan confessed a few months ago to five extramarital affairs. None of them were among the complainants, according to him.
After the refusal of the investigating judges to release him, a bail judge still has to decide within three days of Ramadan’s request.
At the end of October 2017, two women filed complaints against the professor, accusing him of having raped them.
One accused him of having raped and beaten her during their only meeting in a hotel in Lyon in 2009 and the second accused him of having abused her in a hotel in Paris in 2012.
However, the first complainant’s story was contradicted in July by her brother, who showed investigators pictures of her celebrating his wedding on the night she claimed to have been raped.
In June, a third woman filed a complaint against the Islamic scholar with a similar story in Geneva, Switzerland.
If the charges are confirmed, the scholar will face up to 15 years in prison on the charge of rape, and up to 20 years on the separate charge of rape of a vulnerable person, since the second complainant is disabled.
