New rape complaint against academic Tariq Ramadan

Journalist claims Ramadan, grandson of Muslim Brotherhood founder, and a staff member assaulted her

Mr Ramadan is facing a new complaint in France for a rape that allegedly took place in 2014. AFP

Tariq Ramadan, a scholar charged in France with raping two women, has now been accused of taking part in the gang rape of a journalist, French judicial sources said on Sunday.

The sources confirmed reports on Europe 1 radio and in Le Journal du Dimanche that a woman in her 50s had accused Ramadan, 56, and a member of his staff of raping her when she went to interview him at a hotel in Lyon in May 2014.

The woman, who filed a criminal complaint in May, also accused Ramadan of issuing "threats or acts of intimidation" aimed at dissuading her from reporting the alleged attack to the police, the judicial sources said.

Mr Ramadan, a married father of four whose grandfather founded the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, was a professor at the University of Oxford until he was forced to take leave when rape allegations surfaced during the "Me Too" movement in late 2017.

He has denied charges that he raped a disabled woman in 2009 and a feminist activist in 2012.

First Mr Ramadan denied to police that he had any sexual contact with either woman, then claimed the encounters were consensual after the investigation revealed text messages between him and one of the women.

He was taken into custody in February 2018 and held for nine months before being granted bail.

Mr Ramadan is also the subject of a rape accusation in his native Switzerland by a woman who claims she was attacked in a Geneva hotel.

His lawyer, Emmanuel Marsigny, refused to comment on Sunday on the latest allegations in France.

The woman behind the latest complaint told police that Ramadan and a male assistant repeatedly raped her in Mr Ramadan's room at the Sofitel hotel in Lyon.

She said the attack was of "untold violence" and claimed that when she threatened to report them to the police Mr Ramadan replied: "You don't know how powerful I am."

She said he contacted her on Messenger in January, two months after his release from jail, saying that he wanted to make her an offer of a "professional nature", without giving details.