A Paris court has sentenced Islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan to 18 years in prison after finding him guilty of raping three women.
The verdict follows a separate conviction in Switzerland two years earlier for a different sexual assault.
The case in France surfaced in 2017 amid the wider Me Too movement, when two of the three complainants first went public.
The women said the assaults took place in hotels in 2009 and 2012, and their testimony was central to the prosecution.
Ramadan, 63, a former professor of Islamic studies at Oxford’s St Antony’s College, did not appear at the Paris trial and has consistently denied the allegations.
His lawyers said he is being treated for multiple sclerosis in Geneva and criticised the proceedings as unfair.
Judge Corinne Goetzmann stressed the gravity of the offences in handing down the lengthy sentence and noted that consent to sex does not equate to consent to all sexual acts.
The court also ordered a permanent ban on Ramadan entering French territory.
An arrest warrant was issued after the verdict, but the court noted complications in enforcing it because Switzerland and France lack an extradition arrangement that would easily transfer him across the border.
That legal hurdle makes a second trial or immediate imprisonment in France unlikely without his presence in France.
One of the complainants, Henda Ayari, said judges had believed her account and recalled nearly a decade of suffering since she first reported the assault.
She urged recognition of other victims who either lacked the courage to come forward or withdrew complaints amid intimidation.
The second French accuser described an attack in Lyon in 2009, while the earlier Swiss conviction involved an allegation of rape in Geneva in 2008.
Ramadan was previously given a prison sentence in Switzerland related to that case.
Responding to the Paris verdict, Ramadan called for a retrial with both sides present and said he would appeal.
He told a French newspaper that health reasons prevented his attendance and insisted he had engaged a legal team because he intended to contest the charges.
Ramadan has blamed a campaign of slander and suggested political motives aimed at sidelining him as a Muslim intellectual.
He is the grandson of Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, a detail often raised in discussions about his public profile.
The sentence marks a significant legal and reputational fall for a once-prominent scholar, and it underscores the wider impact of the Me Too era in prompting renewed scrutiny and prosecutions of historical sexual violence allegations.
