Islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan convicted of rape on appeal in Switzerland

GENEVA: Islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan, who has been convicted of rape by a Geneva appeals court and sentenced to prison, will contest the verdict before Switzerland´s highest court, his lawyers said on Tuesday.

After being acquitted last year, a Geneva appeals court said on Tuesday it had found the 62-year-old former Oxford University professor “guilty of rape and sexual coercion” of a woman in a Geneva hotel 16 years ago.

It sentenced him to three years in prison, two of them suspended, marking the first guilty verdict against Ramadan, who faces a string of rape allegations in Switzerland and France.