The Paris Court of Appeal examined on Thursday March 23 the validity of the psychiatric expertise rendered in the investigation targeting Tariq Ramadan, the Swiss Islamologist threatened with a trial at the Assizes in France for rape, according to several lawyers.
The investigating chamber will issue its decision on May 11 on the motions for nullity filed by the defense.
Last July, the Paris prosecutor's office requested the referral to the assizes of Tariq Ramadan for suspicion of rape committed between 2009 and 2016 on four women.
It is now up to the investigating judges to order a trial or not.
“Partiality” and “animosity”
This Thursday, Tariq Ramadan's lawyers challenged the appointment of Dr. Daniel Zagury to the college of specialists in charge of expertise on the complainants, accusing him of bias and animosity towards their client.
A previous expert report on the notion of influence carried out by Dr. Zagury had been canceled for procedural flaws by the Court of Appeal.
A week after this cancellation, the magistrates had ordered a college of experts including again the famous psychiatrist to re-examine this question, central in this affair.
For Tariq Ramadan's lawyers, collegiality cannot erase a lack of bias on the part of the experts.
They also filed a priority question of constitutionality on the impossibility of challenging ab initio an expert appointed by magistrates, which according to them undermines the rights of the defense.
The public prosecutor's office requested the rejection of the requests, according to sources familiar with the matter.
Read alsoHenda Ayari: "A powerful network is working to make Tariq Ramadan a martyr"
“A legal fiasco”
"
This file, which is increasingly akin to a legal fiasco, is no longer based on anything but a lame and illegal expertise carried out in particular by an expert whose previous work was canceled for abuse of office", declared to
the AFP Mes Ouadie Elhamamouchi and Philippe Ohayon.
Renaming Daniel Zagury to the college of experts was an "
act of defiance
" vis-à-vis the court of appeal, they added.
"
It is completely far-fetched that an accusation can relate solely to an expertise in which the main person concerned, namely Tariq Ramadan, was not heard
," they added.
"
The defense of Tariq Ramadan brings the file to the question of the impartiality of Dr. Zagury under the pretext that he would have collaborated in a community orientation association
", Schibboleth-Actualité de Freud, which would have adopted positions hostile to the Islamologist, said Me Nathanaël Majster, lawyer for one of the complainants.
“
Do we have to scrutinize all the spiritual or cultural commitments of the experts tomorrow?
In reality, they are already trying to bring the file on which they are very fragile on the ground of community clashes
, ”he added.
"
Rather than accusing Tariq Ramadan's defense of being unfair, it would have been easier to answer questions of law
", retorted Tariq Ramadan's lawyers.
In this emblematic case of the #MeToo era, Tariq Ramadan, 60, first denied having had sex with the complainants before acknowledging "relationships
of domination
", rough but "
consensual
".
This affair, triggered in 2017, caused the fall of this charismatic and contested figure of European Islam.
