Prosecutors tell NY judge to drop Strauss-Kahn case

NEW YORK, (Reuters) – New York prosecutors asked a  judge to dismiss sexual assault charges against former IMF  chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn today, a stunning reversal  that could revive the political future of a man many had seen  as the next president of France.
Prosecutors gave up hope they could convict Strauss-Kahn  after losing confidence in their star witness, Nafissatou  Diallo, 32, a hotel maid from Guinea who alleged that  Strauss-Kahn emerged naked from the bathroom of his luxury  suite on May 14 and forced her to perform oral sex.
The motion to dismiss, filed after a brief meeting with the  maid and her lawyer, showed prosecutors “no longer have  confidence” that Strauss-Kahn is guilty beyond a reasonable  doubt because the accuser’s story kept shifting.
It urged the judge to drop all charges. Strauss-Kahn will  appear in court on Tuesday at 1130 ET (1530 GMT).
Only three months ago, Strauss-Kahn was the world’s leading  financial diplomat, confidant of presidents rescuing  debt-ridden nations. His downfall was shocking. Pulled from a  first-class seat on an Air France by police, he was thrown into  New York City’s gang-ridden Rikers jail on charges of attempted  rape.
Prosecutors in May had said the maid’s complaint was  “truthful” and “consistent.” But the case began to crumble when  prosecutors found Diallo had lied on her immigration forms  about a gang rape in Guinea, lied on her tax forms and gave  three different versions of events surrounding the encounter in  the Sofitel Hotel in Times Square.
“The nature and number of the complainant’s falsehoods  leave us unable to credit her version of events beyond a  reasonable doubt, whatever the truth may be about the encounter  between the complainant and the defendant,” the court papers  said.
“If we do not believe her beyond a reasonable doubt, we  cannot ask a jury to do so.”
Diallo’s lawyer Kenneth Thompson told reporters after  meeting with the Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance that  the state has denied the right of a woman to get justice in a  rape case.
“He has not only turned his back on this innocent victim  but all of the forensic, medical and other physical evidence in  this case,” he said. “If the Manhattan district attorney who is  elected to protect our mothers, our daughters, our sisters, our  wives and our loved ones, is not going to stand up for them  when they are raped or sexually assaulted, who will?”
Outside the court, women’s rights protesters shouted “New  York City, rape capital of America!”
POLITICAL FUTURE
From the outset, Strauss-Kahn, 62, had strenuously asserted  his innocence. Some political supporters were convinced the  allegations were part of a set-up meant to destroy his chances  of unseating French President Nicolas Sarkozy in next April’s  election.
His lawyers welcomed Monday’s developments.
“We also maintained that there were many reasons to believe  that Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s accuser was not credible,” his lawyers  William Taylor and Benjamin Brafman said in a statement.
Though he is free to return to French politics, his image  was tarnished by numerous tales of his forceful sexual  advances. The Socialist party would have to make an exception  to allow him into the presidential race at this late date. A  poll released in July showed two-thirds of French people do not  want him to be a candidate.
He also still faces a civil lawsuit that Diallo filed  against him on Aug. 8 and a complaint from a French writer who  said he tried to rape her during a 2003 interview.
After detectives pulled him off the first-class section of  a Paris-bound jet on the day of the purported attack on Diallo,  his arrest sent shockwaves across the globe.
ACCUSER’S CREDIBILITY
Charming and multilingual, the silver-haired Strauss-Kahn  had gained esteem for reforming the International Monetary Fund  as managing director, injecting it with transparency and  accountability. Then his stature took a mighty fall.
The accuser, Diallo, painted a vivid picture of what she  said happened in Suite 2806 of the Sofitel Hotel near Times  Square, saying a naked Strauss-Kahn chased her down a hall and  into the bedroom and forced her to perform oral sex.
She said she broke free and that he dragged her into a  bathroom where he forced himself on her again.
But her credibility was later thrown into question when  prosecutors revealed she had told authorities numerous lies,  including fabricating a story about being gang-raped in Guinea  in order to gain U.S. asylum. She also changed details of her  story about what happened following the purported assault.
U.S. media at first kept her identity secret, respecting a  practice not to name sexual assault accusers, until she came  forward in an interview with Newsweek magazine and ABC  television in late July.
“I want justice. I want him to go to jail. I want him to  know that there is some place you cannot use your money, you  cannot use your power, when you do something like this,” she  said tearfully in the ABC interview.
According to her lawyers, prosecutors said they turned up a  recorded conversation between Diallo and a man detained in an  Arizona jail in which, speaking in the West African dialect  Fulani, she said “words to the effect” that “this guy has a lot  of money. I know what I am doing.”
Such a conversation could provide Strauss-Kahn’s defense  lawyers with ammunition to attack Diallo’s motives, although  she denied referring to his wealth and her lawyers said the  quote was not on the tape, according to an interpreter hired by  prosecutors.
Strauss-Kahn resigned from the IMF four days after his  arrest, while he was still being held without bail in New  York’s notorious Rikers Island, a massive complex of 10 jails  renowned for gang violence and well known to viewers of  television crime dramas.
He later was granted house arrest after posting $1 million  cash bail and a $5 million insurance company bond, staying in a  $50,000-a-month townhouse in Manhattan’s Tribeca neighborhood  with an electronic monitor clamped to his ankle. He paid  another $150,000 a month for a security detail that included  armed guards.
FRENCH COMPLAINT
The case also brought up troubling stories from  Strauss-Kahn’s past as a womanizer who flirted with female  journalists covering him, and it revived the story of a  controversial affair he once had with a subordinate at the IMF.  He was nicknamed “the great seducer.”
The Paris prosecutor has opened a preliminary inquiry into  a complaint filed by French journalist Tristane Banon, who says  Strauss-Kahn unhooked her bra and tried to open her jeans as  she kicked him in what ended up as fight on the floor. Now free  of New York charges, he must mount a new defense in France.
However, a judicial source said the French complaint was  likely to be dropped as prosecutors were struggling to find  evidence to support a charge of attempted rape.
A statute of limitations on a lesser crime of sexual  aggression has already expired.
Other French women have seized on the cases to air their  grievances about sexism in the professional sphere, shifting  the conversation beyond commentaries on America’s prudish views  on sex to a national assessment of French machismo.
Yet his own wife, the wealthy and well-known former  television journalist Anne Sinclair, seemed forgiving of his  reputed behavior.
“No, I’m rather proud of it!” she told the French weekly  L’Express in a 2006 interview. “It’s important to seduce, for a  politician. As long as I seduce him and he seduces me, that’s  enough for me.”
It also exposed a French-American rift on the rights of  criminal defendants. Many French were outraged at  Strauss-Kahn’s “perp walk” — perp is short for perpetrator —  when detectives paraded a handcuffed, unshaven defendant before  media cameras while the identity of his accuser was kept  private.
In the end, the accuser’s credibility issues were so severe  that the Manhattan District Attorney’s office agreed to release  Strauss-Kahn from house arrest without bail on July 1.