THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Seven weeks after a haggard and scowling shadow of Dominique Strauss-Kahn was first hauled in front of a New York judge, his old self swaggered into room 1324 at the state supreme court on Friday with a broad smile.
In a crisp navy suit, pressed white shirt and baby blue tie, he beamed like a man already plotting his sensational comeback as a statesman, while New York prosecutors and lawyers for the 32-year-old hotel maid who continues to allege that he tried to rape her looked shell-shocked.
Eight minutes later, the 62-year-old – who had been under house arrest and armed guard in a Manhattan townhouse, wearing an electronic tag – was free. The $1 million (£620,000) cash bail and $5 million (£3.1 million) bond put up by his wife, the wealthy heiress Anne Sinclair, were returned.
Joan Illuzzi-Orbon, an assistant district attorney, told the court that "the fact of a sexual encounter" between the pair, after the maid arrived to clean suite 2086 of the Manhattan Sofitel on May 14, "was and is corroborated by the forensic evidence".
Mr Strauss-Kahn remains charged with forcing the woman to give him oral sex after trying to rape her, before fleeing and being arrested aboard a flight on the tarmac of JFK airport, minutes away from take-off for Paris.
The French Socialist, who had been expected to stand against Nicolas Sarkozy for the French presidency in 2012, was forced to resign as head of the International Monetary fund five days later, his career apparently in tatters.
However, "substantial credibility issues" have been found with the maid, Ms Illuzzi-Orbon told the court, following a "comprehensive and thorough investigation of all aspects of this case, including the background of the complainant and her various statements about the incident". » | Jon Swaine, New York | Friday, July 01, 2011
My comment:
I said from the start that things didn't add up in this case, and they have been shown not to do so. The case against DSK appeared to be flimsy by anyone's standards. Things that were being said about the chambermaid just didn't add up either. From the beginning, it seemed to me that the chambermaid might have just been fortune-hunting. They tried to say that she didn't know who DSK was. But that didn't ring true. She was cleaning a penthouse suite in a fine hotel. Hotel staff would have informed her whose room she was cleaning, and she would in all probability have been told to pay close attention to detail when cleaning the room, because of the importance of the person staying in the suite. That's how it works in fine hotels, and more especially with guests who are regulars. And, by all accounts, DSK was a regular guest. – © Mark
This comment also appears here
