Geneva (AFP) - 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 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.

A charismatic yet controversial figure in European Islam, he has always maintained his innocence, and his lawyers immediately announced that he would take the case to Switzerland’s highest court.

“It will be up to the Federal Court to rule on this case, to uphold justice and recognise this man’s innocence,” Yael Hayat and Guerric Canonica said in a statement to AFP.

Lawyers for the plaintiff in the case – a Muslim convert identified only as “Brigitte” – said they were relieved “the truth had finally triumphed”, insisting they were not worried about the new appeal.

“Our client is of course relieved, considering what she has had to endure for the truth to come out,” the woman’s lawyers Veronique Fontana and Robert Assael told AFP.

- ‘Trap’ -

Their client had testified before the court that he subjected her to rape and other violent sex acts in a Geneva hotel room during the night of October 28, 2008.

The lawyer representing Brigitte said she was repeatedly raped and subjected to “torture and barbarism”.

Ramadan said Brigitte invited herself up to his room. He let her kiss him, he said, before quickly ending the encounter.

He said he was the victim of a “trap”.

Brigitte, who was in her forties at the time of the alleged assault, filed her complaint 10 years later, telling the court she felt emboldened to come forward following similar complaints filed against Ramadan in France.

Ramadan’s Swiss lawyers insisted that the appeals court verdict, which was handed down on August 28 but only made public on Tuesday, had little to do with the facts of the case.

“It is clearly not the facts that led to the conviction of Tarik Ramadan. It is his name,” Hayat and Canonica said.

“This case, judged anonymously, would never have led to this man being put on trial, much less being convicted.”

- Stockholm syndrome -

The appeals verdict overturns a lower court finding last year acquitting Ramadan of rape and sexual coercion, citing a lack of evidence, contradictory testimonies and “love messages” sent by the plaintiff after the alleged assault.

But during the appeals trial held last May, Brigitte’s lawyers alleged that Ramadan had exercised significant “control” over the woman, suggesting she had suffered something akin to Stockholm syndrome.

The three appeals court judges pointed to “witness testimony, certificates, medical notes and private expert opinions consistent with the facts presented by the plaintiff”.

“Elements collected during the investigation have thus convinced the chamber of the guilt of the accused,” the court said in a statement.

Ramadan was a professor of contemporary Islamic studies at Oxford and held visiting roles at universities in Qatar and Morocco.

He was forced to take leave of absence in 2017 when rape allegations surfaced in France at the height of the “Me Too” movement.

In France, he is suspected of raping three women between 2009 and 2016.

His large defence team is fighting a Paris appeals court decision in June that the cases can go to trial.