French Court Rules Rape Charges Remain for Oxford Scholar Tariq Ramadan

Islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan will face charges of raping two women despite an appeal for the matter to be dropped, a source close to the inquiry said.

Swiss-born Ramadan is an Oxford University professor whose grandfather founded Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood movement. He has been held since February on charges that he raped two women in France.

Investigative judges have already denied several requests for bail for the “perverted guru” before the latest was rejected, as AFP reports.

The most recent appeal came in February when he was denied bail by a court of appeal which ruled he was not only a flight risk but may again engage in the same type of behaviour he is indicted for.

More than 100,000 supporters of Ramadan have signed a petition to have him immediately released and over 100,000 euros have been raised on the French crowdfunding platform CotizUP.

Supporters of Ramadan claimed last year on social media that the allegations were a “Zionist plot” before he was arrested in January by French police.

Ramadan has been accused of rape by two different women. The Swiss author Henda Ayari who claimed Ramadan had assaulted her in 2012 at a Union of Islamic Organisations of France conference and an anonymous woman known as “Christelle”.

Christelle, a 40-year-old disabled woman, claims that the Muslim scholar attacked her in Lyon in a hotel room in 2009.

Ramadan, a professor of contemporary Islamic studies at Oxford University, denies any wrong doing and maintains his innocence.

He was banned from entering the United States by the George W. Bush administration in 2004 after it was alleged he donated to the Association de Secours Palestinien (ASP/Palestinian Relief Organisation) from 1998 to 2002. The U.S. government considered the ASP a group that funded terrorism by giving some of their donations to the anti-Israel terrorist organisation Hamas which is proscribed in the U.S.

Ramadan’s U.S. travel ban was later lifted by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2010 during the Obama administration.

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