Tariq Ramadan and the integrity of French justice

For the last four months, Oxford professor Tariq Ramadan has been rotting in a French jail, like Jean Valjean. He stands accused of rape by several women who came forward during the #MeToo scandal. One says that in a hotel room in Paris in the spring of 2012, the world-renowned Swiss scholar of Islam “choked me so hard that I thought I was going to die”. Another has reportedly described “blows to the face and body, forced sodomy, rape with an object and various humiliations, including being dragged by the hair to the bathtub and urinated on”.

If Ramadan is guilty of these despicable acts, he must face the full weight of French law. But he must first be given the chance to defend himself. And there are grave concerns that he is not.

On 2 February police locked Ramadan up and denied him bail, despite their investigations then being only incipient. They insisted that if they let him go he might flee the country or coerce his accusers into dropping their charges. But Ramadan hardly looked like doing either: he had flown to France to hand himself in and must know that intimidating his alleged victims would ruin his hopes in any trial.

Not only this, but police threw Ramadan into solitary confinement – an indignity usually saved for arch criminals, not mild-mannered Oxford dons. There he has until recently been denied phone calls and visits from his wife and children. A sufferer of multiple sclerosis, he has also reportedly plunged into ill health. He has several times been admitted to hospital; his lawyer says he is enduring migraines, numbness of limb, severe cramp, sleep and memory difficulties; and he now needs support to walk. His lawyer says that a court-appointed doctor in fewer than 20 minutes contradicted the chief prison doctor in declaring him fit for detention.