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Charges Against Strauss-Kahn Dismissed

August 23, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Prosecutors in the office of Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the Manhattan district attorney, told the judge, Michael J. Obus of State Supreme Court, that they could not prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt because of serious credibility issues with the hotel housekeeper who had accused Mr. Strauss-Kahn of sexually assaulting her as she entered his suite to clean it.

The judge initially had issued a stay on his decision until an appellate court could hear the housekeeper’s motion to remove Mr. Vance and appoint a special prosecutor. The appeals court denied the request, concurring with Justice Obus that the argument had no legal basis.

Justice Obus’s order of dismissal brought some semblance of vindication to Mr. Strauss-Kahn, 62, after his stunning arrest more than three months ago. He was taken into custody May 14 aboard an Air France jet at Kennedy International Airport and then paraded before news cameras, disheveled and in handcuffs.

For his accuser, Nafissatou Diallo, a 33-year-old Guinean immigrant, the result caps a precipitous fall. Prosecutors initially portrayed her as a credible and powerful witness, only to say that her myriad lies about her past — which included a convincing, emotional but ultimately fraudulent account of being gang raped by soldiers in Guinea — ended up undermining the case.

Ms. Diallo, who has made her identity public, still has a civil lawsuit pending against Mr. Strauss-Kahn for unspecified monetary damages, and her lawyer, Kenneth P. Thompson, has been relentless in his assertion that Mr. Strauss-Kahn sexually assaulted his client and that Mr. Vance’s office abandoned the case too soon.

Mr. Thompson made one last desperate attempt to keep the criminal case going, filing a motion on Monday asking that Mr. Vance’s office be disqualified. But about an hour before Tuesday’s hearing started, a court clerk handed out a one-page decision in which Justice Obus denied Mr. Thompson’s motion. However, Mr. Thompson appealed, leading to Justice Obus’s suspension of his dismissal order.

The appellate division’s ruling was expected to set the stage for Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s eventual return to France, where he is a leading figure in the Socialist Party and had been considered a top candidate for the French presidency.

After the hearing, Mr. Strauss-Kahn issued a statement, characterizing the time since his arrest as “a nightmare for me and my family,” and thanking the judge, his wife and family and other supporters.

He added that he was “obviously gratified that the district attorney agreed with my lawyers that this case had to be dismissed.”

“We appreciate his professionalism and that of the people who were involved in that decision,” he continued. Mr. Strauss-Kahn added that he looked forward to “returning to our home and resuming something of a more normal life.”

The case has attracted international attention ever since the arrest; each appearance in court has drawn a carnival-like atmosphere outside, with journalists and camera crews mixing with protesters. The scene on Tuesday was no exception: Well before Mr. Strauss-Kahn arrived at 11:03 a.m., about three dozen protesters gathered, most of them in opposition to Mr. Strauss-Kahn.

To them, the case represented an instance of a powerful, wealthy man getting away with something he did to a poor immigrant woman.

But his lawyers, Benjamin Brafman and William W. Taylor III, have maintained that the sexual encounter between him and Ms. Diallo was consensual and that she was simply trying to exploit him for money.

“You can engage in inappropriate behavior perhaps,” Mr. Brafman said outside the courthouse after the hearing. “But that is much different than a crime.”

Mr. Brafman and Mr. Taylor each characterized Mr. Vance’s decision to drop the charges in such a high-profile case as “courageous.”

But Mr. Thompson, Ms. Diallo’s lawyer, said Mr. Vance not only “abandoned an innocent woman,” he also made it less enticing for other women to come forward with claims of sexual assault.

On Monday, prosecutors laid out their reasons for asking that the case be dismissed in a 25-page report that concluded that Ms. Diallo could not be believed.

Colin Moynihan and William K. Rashbaum contributed reporting.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=1843b5b7af123fd6565be7ad42cfd387

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Hotel Housekeeper Tells Magazine of Her Encounter With Strauss-Kahn

July 25, 2011 by Leave a Comment

In the interview, with Newsweek magazine, the housekeeper, a 32-year-old immigrant from Guinea named Nafissatou Diallo, said she had apologized and turned to leave when she realized that Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s room was not empty.

“Oh, my God,” Ms. Diallo recounted saying as she caught sight of a naked man — Mr. Strauss-Kahn, who was then the managing director of the International Monetary Fund — in the 28th-floor suite she had entered intending to clean. “I’m so sorry.”

Mr. Strauss-Kahn responded, “You don’t have to be sorry,” and reached for her breasts, she told Newsweek.

“You’re beautiful,” Mr. Strauss-Kahn said as he compelled her toward the bedroom, Ms. Diallo recounted to Newsweek, which also refers to her as “Nafi.” She said she told him to stop, saying: “Sir, stop this. I don’t want to lose my job.”

Much of the woman’s account tracks news reports about what she told the authorities about the encounter. Her allegations led to an indictment against Mr. Strauss-Kahn on charges including attempted rape. But some details are new, like her account of their dialogue and her account of her movements around the hotel immediately afterward. But they can be contradictory: She told counselors at the hospital right after the attack, for example, that Mr. Strauss-Kahn had not spoken at all.

Her interview marks the first time either person who was present in the room has publicly provided a narrative of what occurred there. Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s lawyers have suggested that any sexual encounter was consensual. Her interview with Newsweek and a second one with ABC News, scheduled to be broadcast on Monday and Tuesday, appear intended to put pressure on the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., to prosecute the case.

“I want him to go to jail,” Ms. Diallo told Newsweek. “I want him to know there are some places you cannot use your power, you cannot use your money.”

In response to the Newsweek article, Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s lawyers said Ms. Diallo was “the first accuser in history to conduct a media campaign to persuade a prosecutor to pursue charges against a person from whom she wants money.”

Both Newsweek and ABC published pictures of her, and the Newsweek story describes her physically — “her dark hair is hennaed, straightened, and worn flat to her head,” for example.

Newsweek characterized Ms. Diallo’s account of the encounter as “vivid and compelling,” but said that at other points during the interview, which lasted more than three hours, she was less forthright. Questions about her past in Africa “were met with vague responses.” At times, her tears struck the interviewers as “forced,” according to Newsweek. The article also said that she is illiterate, unable to read or write any language. She spoke proudly of her job at the New York Sofitel, where according to the magazine she made $25 an hour plus tips.

Although Mr. Strauss-Kahn remains under indictment, prosecutors have expressed concerns about the accuser’s credibility as a witness, saying that she had admitted lying in her application for asylum from Guinea. They also say she entered false information on tax returns and misrepresented her income to qualify for her housing.

Ms. Diallo described Mr. Strauss-Kahn as physically forceful, saying he behaved like “a crazy man to me.” Once in his bedroom, “he pulls me hard to the bed,” she told Newsweek. He tried to force her to engage in oral sex, she said.

The woman, who is taller than Mr. Strauss-Kahn, said she kept pushing him off, but she added that she did not “want to hurt him” for fear of losing her job. Mr. Strauss-Kahn shoved her to the bathroom, she said, forced her to her knees and made her engage in oral sex, holding her head “so hard” between his hands. At the end of the encounter, she said, she ran out and sought refuge in the hallway.

“I was standing there spitting,” she told Newsweek. “I was so alone.” She exchanged looks but not words with Mr. Strauss-Kahn as he left his suite and headed to the elevator, she said.

She also sought to explain her movements after the encounter, which prosecutors have questioned. She recounted how she went to a nearby room to retrieve her cleaning supplies and then re-entered Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s suite to begin cleaning it. “I went to the room I have to clean,” she said. She reported the encounter to a supervisor.

The whole encounter may have lasted just nine minutes. Citing an anonymous source, Newsweek reported that nine minutes after Ms. Diallo first entered Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s suite, he placed a call to his daughter, whom he then met for lunch.

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Strauss-Kahn’s Lawyers Say He Won’t Plead Guilty

July 7, 2011 by Leave a Comment

William W. Taylor III, who along with Benjamin Brafman is representing Mr. Strauss-Kahn, said late on Wednesday that they did not discuss a plea bargain in the sexual assault case against their client.

“Mr. Strauss-Kahn will not be pleading guilty to anything,” Mr. Taylor said.

In a sign of the deteriorating relationship between the Manhattan district attorney’s office and the woman who made the accusation, her lawyer sent a letter to the district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., requesting that he step aside and let a special prosecutor take over the case.

Mr. Vance promptly rejected the request. Prosecutors remove themselves only in extraordinary circumstances, generally when there is a personal stake in the outcome or a clear conflict of interest.

In the letter, the lawyer, Kenneth P. Thompson, said that Mr. Vance’s office had reached disturbing conclusions about his client based on a summary of a recorded phone conversation she had with a man in an immigration detention center.

Last week, prosecutors informed Mr. Thompson that the conversation raised “very troubling” questions about her credibility because she discussed the possible benefits of pursuing charges against a wealthy man.

But Mr. Thompson said on Wednesday that prosecutors had told him that they were basing their conclusions on “a digest of the conversation” rather than on the recording itself or a full transcript of it, which was in a dialect of the Fulani language of the woman’s native Guinea.

A law enforcement official, however, said on Wednesday that the recorded conversation between the woman and the man, who is accused of dealing drugs, was one of at least three in which she talked about the encounter with Mr. Strauss-Kahn and its aftermath. Investigators were continuing to review and analyze the conversations with Fulani interpreters, the official said.

In the letter, Mr. Thompson said that prosecutors had improperly maligned his client without access to the full conversation. He said they first described their understanding of the recorded conversation to him last Thursday, and then repeated it to The New York Times. Mr. Thompson cited The Times’s account of the conversation as one of several “damaging and prejudicial leaks” from prosecutors as part of the reason for requesting that Mr. Vance recuse himself.

The letter cited an e-mail that Mr. Thompson received on Tuesday from Mr. Vance’s chief assistant, Daniel R. Alonso, that read, “We at this point have only a digest of the conversation, so we need to have our interpreter prepare a complete transcript.”

Mr. Thompson said earlier this week that his client denied that she made the remarks that prosecutors have attributed to her. “She says it’s not true, that she didn’t say it,” Mr. Thompson said. “The way they’re describing the tape, she doesn’t agree with it.”

The law enforcement official said that after further translation and review, prosecutors were confident that the digest accurately reflected what she said.

The investigation has at points been hobbled by difficulties and delays in arranging for translators who were fluent in the dialect spoken by the woman, who accused Mr. Strauss-Kahn of sexually assaulting her when she went to clean his suite at the Sofitel New York on May 14.

Mr. Thompson, in an interview, said his client complained during one early interview session with prosecutors that the interpreter at that session was not rendering her words accurately. His client “stopped the guy, and says, ‘He’s not translating correctly, he’s not from my tribe,’ ” Mr. Thompson said. “Her tribe speaks a very unique dialect of Fulani.”

Erin M. Duggan, a spokeswoman for Mr. Vance’s office, said that the office had not received the letter from Mr. Thompson but that copies had been provided by reporters.

“We strongly disagree with how the office and the work of the assistant district attorneys have been characterized,” she said. “Any suggestion that this office should be recused is wholly without merit.”

Jim Dwyer and Colin Moynihan contributed reporting.

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