BERN: Swiss leading Islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan has now been accused of taking part in the gang rape of a journalist, French judicial sources said, in new development since being charged in France with raping two women.
The sources confirmed reports on Europe 1 radio and in Le Journal du Dimanche newspaper that a woman in her 50s had accused Ramadan, 56, of raping her along with a member of his staff when she went to interview the academic at a hotel in Lyon in May 2014.
Ramadan, however, is out on bail at present.
According to the Middle East Watch, Ramadan and his accomplice had lured the journalist to a hotel room and “then subjected her to repeated sexual assault and ‘untold violence'”.
The publication also noted the woman’s claims that the Islamic scholar had reached out to her in January 2018, making an offer, to which she did not respond. Consequently, two men had reportedly shown up to threaten her.
Among the list of allegations against Ramadan is an accusation that he seduced four teenage students during his time teaching in Switzerland.
In October 2018, Ramadan had said he engaged in “sex games” with two women in France who accuse him of rape but said the “submissive-dominant” relationships were consensual.
Ramadan had faced one of the accusers, named only as “Christelle”, during a 10-hour confrontation on September 18. The woman, a convert who suffers from disabilities arising from a car accident, says the scholar raped her in October 2009 in a hotel room in Lyon, southeastern France.
A lawyer for the other plaintiff, Jonas Haddad, had stressed at the time that Ramadan “lied from the beginning of this case by denying he had sexual relations and that it took one year to confess” and, so, would “it take him another year to confess the rest?”
Married with four children, Ramadan is a grandson of Hasan al-Banna, a thinker and activist who founded the Muslim Brotherhood. He enjoys a substantial following among young Muslims and has challenged French restrictions on wearing veils.
