Two Parisian investigating judges ordered, on Friday July 7, a trial before the Paris departmental criminal court for the Swiss Islamologist Tariq Ramadan, accused of rapes committed between 2009 and 2016 on four women, whom he disputes, according to the indictment order of which Agence France-Presse (AFP) became aware.

Two of his lawyers, Pascal Garbarini and Pauline Baudu-Armand, immediately announced that Mr. Ramadan would appeal the order “without delay”. “The charges have been firmly fought from the outset and the investigation has only confirmed their fragility,” said another lawyer, Elise Arfi.

“Attempting to refer a person to a trial court while the Court of Cassation is seized of a motion for nullity concerning the central point of this file is inadmissible”, also reacted to AFP Mes Philippe Ohayon, Ouadie Elhamamouchi and Nabila Asmane, three other of his lawyers.

His defense has, in fact, lodged an appeal in cassation after the validation on May 11 by the Paris Court of Appeal of capital psychiatric expertise, which it disputed. “This umpteenth forced passage is a terrible admission of weakness,” they added.

At the end of May, Mr. Ramadan, 60, was acquitted of a charge of rape and sexual coercion by a Geneva court, which concluded that there was no evidence against him in the case dating back to on the night of October 28 to 29, 2008. The plaintiff announced an appeal. Three years in prison, half of which was firm, had been requested by the prosecutor.

This was the first rape trial against Mr. Ramadan.

Imprisoned for ten months

Lawyer Laure Heinich, who is defending three women in the case in Paris, including two with Laura Ben Kemoun, said her clients were delighted “with this decision and the obviously very meticulous work done” by the magistrates. Me Ben Kemoun added that the complainants were “relieved and ready for the future”.

In this case, Mr. Ramadan initially denied having had extramarital sexual relations before acknowledging “relationships of domination”, rough but “consensual”.

The case was triggered in late October 2017 by complaints from Henda Ayari, an ex-Salafist turned secular activist, and “Christelle” – a borrowed name -, who respectively denounced a rape in 2012 in Paris and in 2009 in Paris. Lyons.

Between February 2018 and October 2020, Mr. Ramadan had been successively indicted for rape on these first two complainants and three other potential victims. He had been incarcerated for ten months. Two of the victims had been identified by the police on photos and messages found on his computer, while the third, ex-escort girl Mounia Rabbouj, had accused him of nine rapes over the period 2013-2014.

The investigating judges finally decided to refer the preacher to the departmental criminal court, made up of professional magistrates and without popular jurors, for rapes of Henda Ayari, Mounia Rabbouj and one of the women identified in the photo, as well as for rapes of a vulnerable person. for “Christelle”.