DOMINIQUE STRAUSS-KAHN is unlikely to stand trial on charges of sexually assaulting a hotel maid in Manhattan, after the prosecution admitted yesterday that the alleged victim had lied repeatedly when questioned by the district attorney’s office.
The reversal of fortune was nearly as dramatic as Mr Strauss-Kahn’s arrest on May 14th. Judge Michael Obus freed Mr Strauss-Kahn from house arrest and released a letter detailing misrepresentations by Nafissatou Diallo, the 32-year-old maid.
Mr Strauss-Kahn was to have stood trial in September, but the case is now likely to be concluded within weeks. Prosecutors say they still believe that a “nonconsensual sex act” occurred in the former IMF chief’s $3,000-a-night suite at the Manhattan Sofitel and would like the French politician and banker to plead guilty to a misdemeanour. But his lawyers will hear none of it, and he could be cleared as early as July 18th, when he next appears in court.
In a statement released after the hearing, Mr Strauss-Kahn’s attorneys said they “appreciate the fact that the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office has acknowledged that the complaining witness in this case told substantial lies about her own background and the facts of this case”.
The prosecution put out “patently false” accusations against Mr Strauss-Kahn, Benjamin Brafman, one of the attorneys, said.
Judge Obus refunded $1 million in bail to Mr Strauss-Kahn’s wife Anne Sinclair, who sat in the front row of the courtroom. Mr Strauss-Kahn can move freely within the US but cannot leave the country.
After the 10-minute hearing, Ms Diallo’s attorney Kenneth Thompson repeated the graphic description of Mr Strauss-Kahn emerging naked from the bathroom to grab Ms Diallo’s breast and vagina.
He said there were medical records of her bruised vagina and injured shoulder, and that traces of his semen which she “spat out in disgust” were found on the hotel walls and floor.
“Our concern is that the Manhattan district attorney is too afraid to try this case,” Mr Thompson said.
According to a letter which the district attorney’s office filed with the court yesterday, Ms Diallo told a grand jury that she hid in a hotel hall until she saw Mr Strauss-Kahn leave the room, then reported the attack. She has since admitted that she cleaned another room and returned to clean Mr Strauss-Kahn’s suite before telling her supervisor.
The district attorney’s office found Ms Diallo lied about persecution in her native Guinea on her application for asylum in the US, lied about having been gang-raped, lied to the housing authority in the Bronx and cheated on her income tax.
The New York Timesquoted law enforcement officials who said Ms Diallo telephoned a man imprisoned for drug dealing within a day of Mr Strauss-Kahn's arrest, to discuss possible financial benefits. The police reportedly have a recording of that conversation. And she reportedly received $100,000 in bank transfers from the same man and his friends over the past two years.
Although she only owns one telephone, Ms Diallo was paying bills to five telephone companies from the bank accounts.
Mr Strauss-Kahn will not regain his position as head of the IMF as his successor, the former French finance minister Christine Lagarde, starts work next Tuesday.
News that the case was unravelling was received like a bombshell in France, where Mr Strauss-Kahn’s arrest provoked a debate about the treatment of women, as well as outrage at the way Mr Strauss-Kahn was paraded in handcuffs before television cameras. There was even speculation yesterday that Mr Strauss-Kahn might stand for president of France after all. He was the front-runner in opinion polls until his arrest. Polls showed a majority of French people believed he was the victim of a conspiracy.