The Court of Cassation could soon definitively refer Swiss Islamologist Tariq Ramadan to the Paris departmental criminal court for rape of three women, if it dismisses the appeals as requested by the attorney general after examination on Wednesday.
On June 27, the Paris Court of Appeal ordered a trial for Ramadan for aggravated rape of one woman and two rapes of two others, ruling out the case of a fourth, Mounia Rabbouj.
The Islamologist and the latter filed antagonistic appeals, the first requesting a general dismissal of the case, the second the addition of his accusations to the three others.
For Wednesday’s hearing, both the rapporteur and the advocate general proposed, according to information of which AFP became aware on Monday, the non-admission of these appeals. This procedure would thus make it possible to rule out these appeals. Both consider that these requests tend to call into question the substantive assessment of the investigating chamber, while the role of the Court of Cassation is limited to verifying the absence of an error of law.
“Henda Ayari calmly awaits the decision of the Court of Cassation and gives an appointment to Tariq Ramadan” before the criminal court, her lawyer David-Olivier Kaminski told AFP.
In this highly publicized and emblematic procedure of the #MeToo era, the complainants described particularly brutal sexual relations. “The hand that holds and forces the head, the arm that prevents you from moving or turning around, the weight of the body, the crazy look, the words of domination and submission, the orders, the gestures, this attitude to impose the penetrations,” described the initial committal order.
It is precisely the story of Mounia Rabbouj, who presented a dress stained with the Islamologist’s semen, which forced the intellectual to admit in mid-2018 that he had had adulterous relations with her and former mistresses, “domination”, harsh but “consensual”, a major turning point in this issue. After the first complaint at the end of 2017, Ramadan initially contested any sexual act with his accusers.
In Geneva, the preacher was sentenced this summer to three years in prison, including one year, for rape and sexual coercion in 2008. His lawyers appealed to the Swiss Federal Tribunal, the supreme court of the Confederation.
Violence highlighted by the court of appeal
On July 7, 2023, after six years of investigation, two investigating judges ordered the dismissal of Ramadan for rapes against “Christelle”, Henda Ayari, Mounia Rabbouj and a fourth woman. In its judgment of June 27, of which AFP was informed, the court of appeal took the opposite view of the investigating magistrates and the investigation, which had focused on the right of way.
This debated notion, “in the sense of a stratagem leading to the necessarily total deprivation of free will, does not seem to be able to be retained at any stage of the relationship” between Mr. Ramadan and the civil parties “since even after the facts, the women quickly began a fight to take revenge and to prevent there being other victims,” indicated the appeal judges. For these magistrates, it is on the contrary “the violence which is mainly highlighted in the different stories” of the victims.
If the judges consider that they have not obtained material evidence of the violence denounced by the civil parties, they note the “violence” of Tariq Ramadan in sexual relations, which “exceeded what a woman could reasonably accept” and also exceeded this which could have been agreed between Mr. Ramadan and these women during the discussions which led to relations, between 2009 and 2016.
The case of Mounia Rabbouj dismissed
The appeal judges dismissed the case of Mounia Rabbouj, who had denounced nine rapes committed between 2013 and 2014. The one “who multiplied the photos and videos of her completely naked body did not keep any image of the injuries she allegedly sustained. suffered,” scathed the investigating chamber. For the latter, if the ex-escort girl “could have been subjugated by Tariq Ramadan and his international aura, (her) behavior cannot be considered as that of a woman deprived of her free will”. She “showed no reluctance and deliberately continued to entertain Mr. Ramadan’s fantasies.”
