Reckless Turtle
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In November 2017, Tariq Ramadan took leave of absence from Oxford to contest allegations of rape and sexual misconduct.[10] The university's statement noted that an "agreed leave of absence implies no acceptance or presumption of guilt".[4] In February 2018, he was formally charged with raping two women: a disabled woman in 2009 and a feminist activist in 2012.[11][12] In September 2019, the French authorities expanded the investigation against Ramadan, already charged with raping two women, to include evidence from two more alleged victims.[13] On 5 December 2019, a Swiss woman who had accused him of rape in 2018, launched a new case against him for slander. The charges have not come to a full conclusion yet,[14] but he was acquitted of one charge in May 2023.[15] In February 2020, Ramadan was formally charged with raping two more women[16] and in October 2020, Ramadan was formally charged with raping a fifth woman.[17]
In October 2017, secular activist Henda Ayari filed a complaint with the prosecutor's office of Rouen, stating that Ramadan had sexually assaulted her in a Paris hotel. Ayari had previously described the alleged incident in her 2016 book J’ai choisi d’être libre (in English I Chose to be Free), but had not revealed the real name of her attacker.[96]
Ramadan's lawyer, Yassine Bouzrou, has said he would file a counter-suit for defamation. Bouzrou told the French paper Le Parisien that he denied the allegations and would file a complaint for defamation to Rouen prosecutors.[97]
A few days after Ayari, a second woman filed a complaint stating that Ramadan raped her. The disabled 45-year-old French convert to Islam, known in media reports as Christelle,[98] says Ramadan in 2009 lured her into his hotel room where he assaulted and raped her.[99] A third woman claimed Ramadan had sent her "pornographic" messages and later tried to blackmail and manipulate her.[100]
Four other Swiss women subsequently came forth in early November 2017 with allegations that Ramadan molested them when they were teenagers. The claimants include one woman who says that Ramadan made advances when she was 14 years old, and another who claims she had sexual relations with Ramadan when she was 15. Ramadan has denied the accusations.[101] [102]
On 4 November 2017, the satirical French newspaper Charlie Hebdo published a cover story on the Ramadan affair.[103] On 7 November 2017, the University of Oxford announced that, "by mutual agreement, and with immediate effect" Ramadan "has taken a leave of absence". The statement noted that an "agreed leave of absence implies no acceptance or presumption of guilt".[4][10] On 9 November 2017, the French weekly news magazine L'Obs published a cover story covering the allegations.[104] In January 2018, Ramadan was denied entry to Qatar as a consequence of the scandal.[105][106]
On 31 January 2018, Ramadan was taken into custody by French police.[107] After two days of questioning, he was formally charged with two counts of rape and ordered to remain in custody.[12] He was held in the Fleury-Mérogis prison, Essonne.[108]
In March 2018, a third woman came forward alleging that she was raped by Ramadan on multiple occasions in France, Brussels and London between 2013 and 2014.[109][110] Shortly thereafter, a fourth woman filed a police complaint alleging she had been raped by Ramadan. An American now living in Kuwait, she alleged that Ramadan had assaulted her in Washington DC in August 2013. No charges emerged from this complaint.[111][112][113]
In April 2018, the Belgian judiciary reported that Ramadan had paid €27,000 three years earlier to a Belgian-Moroccan woman in exchange for the deletion of online posts revealing their affair. In the posts, she had detailed Ramadan's alleged "psychological grip" on her.[114]
On 13 April 2018, the Swiss newspaper La Tribune de Genève reported that a woman had come forward to the authorities in Geneva and accused Ramadan of a sexual assault involving aggravating cruelty in September 2008.[115] The National reported that he allegedly "raped her and held her against her will for several hours in a Geneva hotel room".[116]
Later in April 2018, Ramadan admitted that he had been in a sexual relationship with the third rape complainant, who had presented to investigators a dress reportedly stained with his semen, but he insisted that it was always consensual.[117]
In May 2018, Ayari modified aspects of her account, according to her based on her diary records, saying that the encounter took place in March 2012 at the Crown Plaza hotel in Paris' Place de la Republique.[118]
In a newspaper blog, British journalist Peter Oborne criticized what he saw as failings in the French justice system and hypocrisy of prominent French public figures such as Manuel Valls pointing out that others accused of rape in France "await their fate in freedom".[119] Regarding such sympathy for Ramadan over his detention, Henda Ayari, the first of his accusers, said that he is undeserving of sympathy. "It is for the courts to decide," she said. "Eventually, if French justice says he is guilty, those people may regret their support."[120]
In June, Ramadan admitted to having five extramarital affairs, saying that he sometimes acted in ways that were inconsistent with his principles.[121] In that same month, the presiding judges also cleared him of the third accusation, because it had been a consensual extramarital affair, and he remains imprisoned for the first two.[122]
In July, it was revealed that the first accuser, Henda Ayari, was at her younger brother's wedding on the date when she was allegedly raped.[123]
In October, Ramadan admitted that he had consensual sex with Ayari and Christelle.[124][98]
In August 2019, Ramadan faced a new accusation of raping a woman in May 2014 in Lyon, France.[125]
In September 2019, Ramadan stated that the allegations from the women, the indictment for the rape, the jail custody, and the media coverage of the case against him were "state racism", and compared his own case with Dreyfus affair. He stated: "Is there not a similarity between Dreyfus affair and Ramadan affair? Nobody can deny the anti-Muslim racism that has grown in this country [France] and which is sustained daily by the politicians and the journalists. Dreyfus who was Jew yesterday is Muslim today". This comparison caused indignation among both French and also Muslim communities. Among other the editor Laurent Joffrin, in his Libération, labelled Ramadan's comparison as "ridiculous" and pointed out: "Dreyfus was innocently convicted by false evidence and sent to the prison house. Ramadan is prosecuted but not convicted, and if he gets convicted, then it would be because of the evidence, not because of his religion".[126]
In February 2020, Ramadan was formally charged with raping two more women.[16]
In May 2023, Ramadan was acquitted by a Swiss court on all charges in relation to a singular allegation of rape and sexual coercion against a woman in a Geneva hotel room. French prosecutors are still mulling over whether to proceed with their case against Ramadan which involves four women who he allegedly raped in the country between 2009 and 2016.[15]
