A Paris criminal court has sentenced Swiss Islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan to 18 years imprisonment for the rape of three women in France between 2009 and 2016.
The verdict, delivered in absentia yesterday after a three-week closed-door trial, marks the latest conviction for the 63-year-old grandson of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna.
The Departmental Criminal Court of Paris found Ramadan guilty on all counts of rape and rape of a vulnerable person.
Presiding Judge Corinne Goetzmann issued an immediate arrest warrant, noting that the sentence cannot be enforced until he is in French custody.
The court also imposed a permanent ban on Ramadan entering French territory after serving his sentence, a socio-judicial supervision order (including a care injunction and prohibition on contacting the victims or producing any literary or visual work relating to the facts), a 10-year period of ineligibility and registration on the national database of sex offenders.
Ramadan did not appear in court.
His lawyers cited a flare-up of multiple sclerosis requiring hospitalisation in Geneva but the claim was rejected following a court-ordered medical assessment.
The trial proceeded behind closed doors at the request of the victims’ lawyers to protect their identities and shield them from harassment.
The three victims were identified in court.
One named Christelle (a pseudonym), accused Ramadan of raping her in a Lyon hotel room in October 2009 during a conference. She described it as a violent assault.
Another woman was 41-year-old Henda Ayari, a former Salafist Muslim turned feminist campaigner, who alleged rape, sexual violence, harassment and intimidation in a Paris hotel room in the spring of 2012.
A third woman reported being raped in 2016.
Prosecutors had requested the 18-year term, arguing that consent to sexual relations does not extend to every act.
Judge Goetzmann echoed this in her remarks, stating: “Consenting to sexuality is not consenting to every sexual act whatsoever.”
Ramadan has consistently denied the allegations.
He initially claimed no sexual contact with the first two women but later admitted consensual relations with them, describing “dominant-submissive” encounters that he insisted were initiated by the women.
He has portrayed the accusations as a “honey trap” and a politically motivated witch-hunt by his enemies.
David-Olivier Kaminski, Henda Ayari’s lawyer, told French daily Le Figaro: “After four weeks of high-quality hearings conducted by a criminal court particularly attached to the smooth running of a fair trial, in the absence of the accused solely because of his choices and responsibility, the overwhelming and numerous evidence against Mr Ramadan has made it possible to establish the particular seriousness of the three crimes of rape for which his guilt has been fully recognised.”
The case forms part of a wider series of allegations that emerged in 2017 at the height of the #MeToo movement.
Founded in 2006, #MeToo is a social movement and awareness campaign against sexual abuse, sexual harassment, and rape culture, in which survivors share their experiences of sexual abuse or sexual harassment.
Ramadan, once a leading voice in European Muslim intellectual circles and a professor of contemporary Islamic studies at Oxford University, was forced to take leave in 2017 and formally retired in 2021.
He has also faced separate proceedings in Switzerland.
In that country, he was convicted on appeal in 2024 of raping a woman in a Geneva hotel room in 2008 and sentenced to three years in prison, with two suspended.
Switzerland’s highest court upheld the conviction in 2025; his lawyers have announced plans to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.
Swiss authorities do not extradite their own nationals, raising questions about how – or whether – the French sentence will ever be served. Ramadan remains in Switzerland.
The Swiss Supreme Court in Lausanne has confirmed the conviction of former Oxford University professor and radical Muslim thought-leader Tariq Ramadan. https://t.co/eh9AYi4lQ0
— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) September 2, 2025
