(AFP) Tariq Ramadan’s lawyers pleaded Wednesday for the controversial Islamic scholar to be acquitted, on the third and final day of his trial in Geneva on charges of rape and sexual coercion.
Prosecutors are seeking a three-year sentence for the former Oxford University professor, half served in jail and the other half suspended.
“I’m only looking for one thing and that’s to convince you that Tariq Ramadan is innocent,” his lawyer Yael Hayat told the Geneva Criminal Court, calling the allegations against the Swiss intellectual “crazy.”
The 60-year-old is accused of raping a woman — a convert to Islam who appeared in court under the assumed name of Brigitte — in a Geneva hotel room in October 2008.
