France: Supporters of Swiss Islamist call sexual harassment claims a ‘Zionist plot’

Via JTA:

Three women said this month they were sexually assaulted by Tariq Ramadan, a Swiss Islamist with ties to terror organizations and who is accused of justifying Palestinian terrorism and promoting conspiracy theories about Jews.

His supporters were calling the accusations the result of a “international Zionist plot” to blacken his name.

The third and newest complainant, a woman identified only as Yasmina in the French media, told Le Parisien that Ramadan, a professor of contemporary Islamic studies at Oxford’s St. Anthony’s College, sexually harassed her in 2014 and blackmailed her for sexual favors, the weekly reported Saturday. She said Ramadan threatened to distribute “compromising pictures” of her.

Ramadan has denied any wrongdoing.  (...)

Following Ayari’s decision to step forward, journalist Caroline Fourest, who has reported extensively about Ramadan’s controversial career, on Friday wrote in the Marianne weekly that supporters of Ramadan are calling the accusations the result of a “international Zionist plot” to tarnish his reputation. 

Ramadan, who in 2009 was fired from Rotterdam’s Erasmus University for taking money from the Iranian regime and who has been refused entry to France and the United States over his ties to Hamas and other terrorist groups, has often aired conspiracy theories about Israel and the Jews. (...)

In 2014 he said that the slaying of four people at the Jewish Museum of Belgium, which authorities say was perpetrated by the Islamist Mehdi Nemmouche, was in fact a deliberate attack on Israeli secret agents.

And in a 2004 interview, Ramadan said that violence for the Palestinians is “a legitimate resistance,” and “the only way for them to be heard at the international level.” In the same interview, he also said he does not justify the use of violence against Israelis.

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