JEDDAH: A rape and sexual assault complaint was filed on Friday in France against Swiss Islamist and Prof. Tariq Ramadan by Henda Ayari, reported Agence France Press (AFP).
Tariq Ramadan is the grandson of Egyptian scholar Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, a group deemed terrorist by a number of Arab and Muslim countries.
The complaint, filed with the Rouen prosecutor’s office in northwest France by Ayari, now a secular activist, detailed criminal acts of rape, sexual assault, violence, harassment and intimidation, according to a document reviewed by AFP.
The Liberators Association, of which Ayari is president, said on Facebook that she was “a victim of something very serious several years ago,” but did not reveal the name of her aggressor for safety reasons.
In her book “I Chose to be Free,” published in November 2016, she described her aggressor as Zubair. She wrote that she met him at his hotel in Paris after he had given a lecture.
“I will not give precise details of the acts he has done to me. It is enough to know that he has benefited greatly from my weakness,” Ayari wrote.
She added that when she rebelled against him at one point, he screamed at her, insulted her, slapped her and treated her violently.
“I confirm today, that the famous Zubair is Tariq Ramadan,” Ayari wrote on Facebook. Her lawyer Jonas Haddad said she did not report the assault earlier out of fear.
“After revelations over the past few days of rape and sexual assault claims in the media, Henda has decided to say what happened to her and take legal action,” he told AFP.
On Saturday, Ramadan denied Ayari's allegations and expressed his intension to sue for “slanderous denunciation” on Monday, his lawyer, Yassine Bouzrou, told French media.
Muslim Brotherhood founder's grandson accused of rape, sexual assault
Muslim Brotherhood founder's grandson accused of rape, sexual assault
Trump sues the BBC for defamation over editing of January 6 speech, seeks up to $10 billion in damages
- A BBC spokesperson told Reuters earlier on Monday that it had “no further contact from President Trump’s lawyers at this point
- The BBC is funded through a mandatory license fee on all TV viewers, which UK lawyers say could make any payout to Trump politically fraught
WASHING: President Donald Trump sued the BBC on Monday for defamation over edited clips of a speech that made it appear he directed supporters to storm the US Capitol, opening an international front in his fight against media coverage he deems untrue or unfair. Trump accused Britain’s publicly owned broadcaster of defaming him by splicing together parts of a January 6, 2021 speech, including one section where he told supporters to march on the Capitol and another where he said “fight like hell.” It omitted a section in which he called for peaceful protest.
Trump’s lawsuit alleges the BBC defamed him and violated a Florida law that bars deceptive and unfair trade practices. He is seeking $5 billion in damages for each of the lawsuit’s two counts. The BBC has apologized to Trump, admitted an error of judgment and acknowledged that the edit gave the mistaken impression that he had made a direct call for violent action. But it has said there is no legal basis to sue.
Trump, in his lawsuit filed Monday in Miami federal court, said the BBC despite its apology “has made no showing of actual remorse for its wrongdoing nor meaningful institutional changes to prevent future journalistic abuses.”
The BBC is funded through a mandatory license fee on all TV viewers, which UK lawyers say could make any payout to Trump politically fraught.
A spokesman for Trump’s legal team said in a statement the BBC “has a long pattern of deceiving its audience in coverage of President Trump, all in service of its own leftist political agenda.”
A BBC spokesperson told Reuters earlier on Monday that it had “no further contact from President Trump’s lawyers at this point. Our position remains the same.” The broadcaster did not immediately respond to a request for comment after the lawsuit was filed.
CRISIS LED TO RESIGNATIONS
Facing one of the biggest crises in its 103-year history, the BBC has said it has no plans to rebroadcast the documentary on any of its platforms.
The dispute over the clip, featured on the BBC’s “Panorama” documentary show shortly before the 2024 presidential election, sparked a public relations crisis for the broadcaster, leading to the resignations of its two most senior officials.
Trump’s lawyers say the BBC caused him overwhelming reputational and financial harm.
The documentary drew scrutiny after the leak of a BBC memo by an external standards adviser that raised concerns about how it was edited, part of a wider investigation of political bias at the publicly funded broadcaster.
The documentary was not broadcast in the United States.
Trump may have sued in the US because defamation claims in Britain must be brought within a year of publication, a window that has closed for the “Panorama” episode.
To overcome the US Constitution’s legal protections for free speech and the press, Trump will need to prove not only that the edit was false and defamatory but also that the BBC knowingly misled viewers or acted recklessly.
The broadcaster could argue that the documentary was substantially true and its editing decisions did not create a false impression, legal experts said. It could also claim the program did not damage Trump’s reputation.
Other media have settled with Trump, including CBS and ABC when Trump sued them following his comeback win in the November 2024 election.
Trump has filed lawsuits against the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and a newspaper in Iowa, all three of which have denied wrongdoing. The attack on the US Capitol in January 2021 was aimed at blocking Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s presidential win over Trump in the 2020 US election.
