The Paris Court of Appeal confirms the referral of Tariq Ramadan to the criminal court for three of the four rapes reported

The 61-year-old Swiss Islamologist contested his dismissal, ordered in July 2023 by two investigating judges of the Paris court.

New twist in the legal proceedings against Tariq Ramadan in France. The Paris Court of Appeal decided on Thursday, June 27, to refer the 61-year-old Swiss Islamologist to the departmental criminal court for the rape of three women and dismissed the case of a fourth, AFP learned from lawyers in the case. On March 29, the investigating chamber of the Court of Appeal examined the appeal filed by the defense of the sixty-year-old, who contested his referral, ordered in July 2023 by two investigating judges of the Paris court. The notion of influence was at the heart of the debates.

In his written requisitions, of which AFP was aware, the attorney general, Matthieu Bourrette, had requested that only the aggravated rape of “Christelle” (assumed first name), committed in Lyon in October 2009. The representative of the public prosecutor had in fact considered that the elements were sufficient to characterize such a crime.

He had, however, dismissed the“grip” that Tariq Ramadan allegedly exercised over “Christelle” and his other accusers: Henda Ayari, a former Salafist turned secular activist who had triggered the case by filing a complaint in October 2017 for a rape that allegedly took place in 2012 in Paris, Mounia Rabbouj, a former escort girl who had accused him of nine rapes between 2013 and 2014, and a third woman for acts dating back to 2016. He had therefore requested a dismissal of the case concerning these three women. But the appeals court ultimately took a position that was still different from that of the Paris prosecutor’s office, the Parisian investigating judges and the attorney general at the appeals court by dismissing only the case of Mounia Rabbouj, franceinfo learned from Laure Heinich, “Christelle’s” lawyer.

The latter and Laura Ben Kemoun, lawyer of Mounia Rabbouj, denounced to the AFP a decision “particularly incomprehensible”. “Why is one excluded and not the others? No one can understand this decision”which will not allow us to judge “the complexity and comprehensiveness of the file”lamented Laure Heinich.

Pascal Garbarini, one of Tariq Ramadan’s lawyers, assured that “the fight continues for innocence” of his client, acquitted in Switzerland in May 2023 in another case of rape and sexual coercion. The defense, like the two lawyers for the civil parties, were considering an appeal to the Court of Cassation on Thursday afternoon.