Geneva: A Swiss court acquitted Tariq Ramadan, a renowned Islamic scholar, from charges of rape and sexual coercion, ruling that there was no evidence against the former Oxford University professor, Al-Jazeera reported.
However, the petitioner’s side informed us that it would appeal the Geneva Criminal Court verdict pronounced on Wednesday.
Ramadan has been awarded about 151,000 Swiss francs ($167,000) in damages from the Swiss canton of Geneva, Al Jazeera reports.
The plaintiff, a 57-year-old Swiss woman, had accused the professor of raping her in a Geneva hotel in 2008. She, widely identified under the assumed name “Brigitte”, left the courtroom before the verdict was ended.
Last week, prosecutors demanded a three-year jail sentence for the academic, who is facing another case of sexual assault in France. However, the Geneva case is the first in which he was tried for.
According to Brigitte’s counsel, Ramadan repeatedly raped her and put her to torture and “barbarism”, quoted Al Jazeera.
However, the academic denied the charges against him and submitted that he never had sexual encounters with the plaintiff, adding that he was the victim of a ‘trap’.
Ramadan’s counsel also stood firm on his innocence and underscored that there was zero scientific evidence for a case against him.
Ramadan had prayed before the court during his final statements last week that he should not be judged based on his “real or supposed” ideology nor the media or political outcries.
As per Brigitte’s complaint, she was in her early forties when the alleged attack happened in 2008. When she filed a complaint ten years later, she reasoned before the court that she felt courageous to come forward after similar complaints arose in France against the professor.
Ramadan was arrested in 2018 after the outbreak of the #Metoo movement, and several women surfaced with sexual harassment allegations against him. In the cases charged against him then, he was awarded ten months of French detention.