Tariq Ramadan, a leading Muslim scholar and former Oxford University professor, presented himself as the victim of a woman who accuses him of raping her in a Geneva hotel as his trial opened in the Swiss city, reports The Times.
Ramadan, 60, said that the Swiss woman, who is using the name Brigitte and was in court behind a screen, had set out to seduce him after meeting at a book signing in 2008 and then accuse him of sexual misconduct to blacken his name. He denies sexual contact with her.
“She was the one tracking me on social media. She sent me 40 text messages before seeing me on the night in question. She said I was sexy and she loved me,” he told the court.
“She is the one who suggested having a coffee. If I was the predator, I would have been the one to contact her. I am here to fight against lies and manipulation.”
Ramadan, who left his post as professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies at St Anthony’s college, Oxford, in 2017 after a number of other women accused him of assault, is charged with subjecting Brigitte to sexual acts, beatings and insults. If convicted, the Swiss-born scholar could face two to ten years in prison.
The case is the first to come to trial since several women claimed in 2017, in the midst of the MeToo movement, that Ramadan had sexually assaulted them. He was released on bail after nine months in detention in France in 2018 and was given leave to travel to Switzerland for his trial. In the slow-moving French investigation, judges have yet to rule on a request by prosecutors to send Ramadan for trial on charges of raping four women in France.