The Paris Court of Appeal examines this Friday the appeal of Swiss Islamologist Tariq Ramadan against his referral to the departmental criminal court for having raped four women, the general prosecutor's office having requested the dropping of charges for three of them and discarded any notion of influence.
The investigating chamber of the Court of Appeal was seized by the defense of Tariq Ramadan, 61, who contests his dismissal for the rape of four women between 2012 and 2016, ordered in July 2023 by two investigating judges of the Paris court.
The influence at the heart of the trial
The notion of influence should be at the heart of this hearing which will be held behind closed doors on Friday afternoon. In his requisitions, the attorney general requested that only one aggravated rape committed in Lyon in October 2009 against a woman nicknamed “Christelle” be held against the Islamologist.
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He dismissed the “control” that Tariq Ramadan would have exercised over his four accusers – “Christelle”, Henda Ayari, Mounia Rabbouj and another woman – who admired him. This notion was successively retained by the Paris prosecutor's office in its final indictment in 2022, then by the investigating judges.
The attorney general contested “the establishment of a process of control” by Tariq Ramadan over these women. The notion of control, he stressed, is “not yet a legal standard in our criminal law”. He nevertheless considered that the elements were sufficient to characterize a violent rape of a vulnerable person concerning “Christelle”.
" Life buoy "
This reading of the file aroused the incomprehension of the plaintiffs' lawyers. “The control is the consequence of the constraint created by the accused on his victims thanks to a well-established operating procedure, and which constitutes one of the material elements of rape”, considers Me Laura Ben Kemoun, who defends “Christelle” and Mounia Rabbouj with Me Laure Heinich.
“By retaining only the 'violent' rape of one of the civil parties, it places the rape in its reductive, archaic vision, brushing aside the fact that a rape can be more complex than simply violent,” explained the lawyer.
Beyond the notion of control, the facts denounced by Henda Ayari are “indeed rape”, underlined in his memoir consulted by AFP one of his lawyers, Me Nathanaël Majster. “To refuse it as the indictment does is a notable regression in the conception of an act of rape making a woman who consents to enter a room with a man one who accepts in advance all the excesses, all the violence and all excesses, whether desired or not,” he added.
Freedom of speech
“Either justice confiscates the trial and the words of the victims, or justice allows, on the contrary, the release of speech, of the judicial truth,” added Ms. Ayari’s second lawyer, Me David-Olivier Kaminski. The defense will, for its part, request “a total dismissal of the case for Tariq Ramadan”, announced Me Pascal Garbarini, one of his lawyers. “Not only does the influence not exist but the facts of rape have not been established,” he said.
Tariq Ramadan had first contested any sexual act with the accusers before recognizing extramarital sexual relations “of domination”, rough but “consensual”. For Ouadie Elhamamouchi, another advisor to Tariq Ramadan, “the influence cannot be seen as a lifeline aimed at saving a legal shipwreck given the multiple lies and contradictions of each of the complainants”.
Also read: Tariq Ramadan: “If I had the same skin color as you, my case would have been closed”
“The charisma of a person is not enough to characterize the existence of influence,” he added, considering that the situation of the complainants “did not (reflect) any influence.” “We are extremely calm,” assured Me Elhamamouchi.
In Switzerland, the preacher obtained an acquittal in May 2023 in a case of rape and sexual coercion dating back to 2008. The appeal trial is due to be held at the end of May in Geneva.