GENEVA (Reuters) – Tariq Ramadan has been sentenced on appeal in Switzerland to three years in prison, including one year in prison, for rape and sexual coercion, the Geneva Court of Justice announced in a statement on Tuesday, reversing an acquittal handed down in May 2023.
The Swiss Islamologist, grandson of Hassan el Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood movement in Egypt, had been accused of rape by a Swiss woman who filed a complaint in 2018 for acts that allegedly took place in 2008 in a Geneva hotel. Tariq Ramadan denied these accusations.
In a judgment dated August 28, the Criminal Appeal and Review Chamber of the Court of Justice annulled the judgment of the Criminal Court of May 24, 2023, declaring Tariq Ramadan guilty of rape and sexual coercion for almost all of the facts reported and sentencing him to three years in prison, including one year in prison.
According to the Court of Appeal, several testimonies, certificates, medical notes and opinions of private experts are consistent with the facts reported by the complainant.
The decision can be appealed within 30 days to the Federal Court, the press release added.
(Reporting Emma Farge, French version Diana Mandiá, editing by Kate Entringer)
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