Preacher Ramadan receives 18 years in prison for rape.Image: keystone
Mar 25, 2026, 9:43 p.mMar 25, 2026, 9:43 p.m
The Swiss Islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan has been sentenced to 18 years in prison by the Paris criminal court for raping three women. The court ruled on Wednesday in absentia and behind closed doors.
The 63-year-old, who has Egyptian roots, was found guilty of rape and rape of a vulnerable person. “Consent to sexual acts does not mean that you agree to every sexual act, no matter what kind,” emphasized the presiding judge Corinne Goetzmann.
It ordered that Ramadan be placed under judicial supervision for eight years, prohibiting him in particular from contacting the victims, but also from disseminating works, audiovisual contributions or public statements relating to this crime. The judge also imposed a final ban on Ramadan entering France after he had served his sentence.
Three crimes between 2009 and 2016
Tariq Ramadan, a Geneva-born grandson of Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, who had already been convicted by the Swiss judiciary of raping a woman, had been on trial in Paris since March 2 for rapes that were allegedly committed against three other women between 2009 and 2016.
These are a serious rape involving violence against a vulnerable person, committed in Lyon in October 2009, a rape said to have occurred in Paris in 2012, against a former Salafist turned secular activist who initiated the case by filing a complaint in October 2017, and another against a third woman in 2016.
Rape also in Switzerland
But the Islamic scholar had previously been convicted in Switzerland of rape and sexual assault. In the summer of 2025, the Federal Court rejected Ramadan’s appeal against the Geneva Cantonal Court’s ruling.
The judges concluded that Ramadan was guilty of raping and sexually assaulting a woman he met in a Geneva hotel in October 2008. They sentenced Ramadan to three years in prison, one of which was suspended. (sda)