Islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan faces rape accuser in court

Prominent Islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan faced one of his rape accusers for more than eight hours in a French court Wednesday as he seeks bail after seven months in custody on charges he furiously denies.

Ramadan, a frequent TV commentator, was a professor at Oxford University until he was forced to take leave when the rape allegations surfaced at the height of the "Me Too" movement late last year.

The Swiss citizen, whose grandfather founded Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, was charged in France in February with raping two women in hotels in 2009 and 2012.

Swiss prosecutors have also opened an investigation into allegations that he raped a woman in a Geneva hotel in 2008, local media reported Sunday.

On Wednesday, he came face-to-face with a disabled woman who accuses him of attacking her in the eastern French city of Lyon in 2009.

She remains anonymous but is known in the media as "Christelle".

"It was a bitter confrontation" in which "everyone maintained their positions," her lawyer Eric Morain said.

"Ramadan sees enemies everywhere, he is a conspiracy theorist, and my client was able to look him in the eye and tell him that she was not his enemy but his victim," Morain said.

"She has carried this pain for 10 years." Ramadan's lawyer Emmanuel Marsigny said his client firmly kept his stance that he had "never had sex with the complainant".

Ramadan, a 56-year-old married father of four, has dismissed the allegations against him as a smear campaign.