Scholar on rape charges ‘victim of honey trap’

TARIQ RAMADAN, a Swiss academic and Islam expert, told a Geneva court he was the victim of a “honey trap” to bring about his “moral downfall” as he denied charges of rape and sexual coercion.

“I have never raped anyone on the surface of this earth,” said the 60-year-old Oxford scholar accused of carrying out a brutal sexual attack on a Swiss woman in a Geneva hotel in 2008.

He faces up to 10 years in prison if found guilty.

“The plaintiff ’s objective was my moral downfall, that it be known I was having extramarital affairs,” said Mr Ramadan – a professor of contemporary Islamic studies at the University of Oxford – before taking leave of absence in 2017 when rape allegations were first made against him by French women. He denies these too.

The Swiss complainant says she has faced threats and wishes to be known as “Brigitte” during the trial. She said she met Mr Ramadan at a book signing in Geneva and later at a conference. A few months later the pair met for coffee at his hotel after a conference and then went to his room, where prosecutors say he raped her three times and almost suffocated her.

Telling the court he was suffering from depression and multiple sclerosis, Mr Ramadan denounced what he called “lies and manipulation” against him.

He told the court she had turned up in a “suggestive outfit” on the night in question. A “play of seduction” started but he claimed he cut it short when he saw blood on the garment, concluding she was having her period.

As it was late, he said she asked if she could stay the night. At this point he abused her, claims the prosecution.

The complainant’s lawyer accused Mr Ramadan of being a compulsive liar.

The French state prosecutor last year called for Mr Ramadan to stand trial in France for the alleged rapes of four women between 2009 and 2016. French investigating judges must now rule whether those cases should go to trial.

Mr Ramadan was arrested in France in 2018 and spent nine months on remand over the French rape allegations before being released on probation and barred from leaving the country.

He was given exceptional authorisation to attend the trial this week.