Rabat – The organizers of an event attended by the detained Islamic scholar in 2009 have contradicted his alibi that he was on a plane to the conference at the time when a complainant accused Tariq Ramadan of rape.
The president of the Union of Young Muslims, Yassine Djemal, who organized the conference in September 2009, said in a court hearing that Ramadan arrived in Lyon, France before the time that the defense had allegedly claimed during an investigation, according to French news agency AFP.
“Mr. Ramadan was scheduled to arrive in Lyon on October 9, 2009, at 11:15 a.m. A colleague and I picked him up at the airport at around 11:35 a.m.,” said Djemal.
In order to defend his client from the plaintiff’s claims, which pinpoint the rape in the afternoon, Ramadan’s first lawyer presented an airline ticket during investigations, implying that the scholar landed in Lyon at about 6:35 p.m.
The witness added that they then transported Ramadan to hotel Hilton where the woman claimed to have been raped.
Ramadan was arrested on January 31, after two women filed complaints against him last year, accusing him of rape.
Ramadan fully denies the accusations and deems them to be part of a “campaign of lies launched by adversaries,” a sentiment shared by his supporters. In March, another French woman of Moroccan origin filed an additional rape accusation at the Paris prosecutor’s office against the detained scholar. The 40-year old complainant accused the Islamologist of nine accounts of rape over the span of a year and a half, from February 2013 to June 2014 in Paris, Roissy, Lille, London, and Brussels.
If the charges are confirmed, the scholar will face up to 15 years in prison on the charge of rape, and up to 20 years on the separate charge of rape of a vulnerable person.
