The charmed life of former International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn is set to resume. The Manhattan District Attorney's Office filed a motion Monday to dismiss all charges in the sexual assault case it previously filed againt Strauss-Kahn. The recommendation was expected after the DA's office expressed grave doubts this summer about the credibility of the alleged victim, Nafissatou Diallo, the hotel maid who accused Strauss-Kahn of forcing himself on her.
The case began to fall apart when District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr.'s investigators got Diallo, an immigrant from the West African nation of Guinea, to admit that she had lied on her application for asylum to the United States.
The New York Times reported:
At about the same time as the papers were filed, the lawyer for Nafissatou Diallo, the hotel housekeeper who accused Mr. Strauss-Kahn of sexual assault, emerged from a brief meeting with prosecutors to offer harsh criticism of Mr. Vance.
"The Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus Vance, has denied the right of a woman to get justice in a rape case," the lawyer, Kenneth P. Thompson, said. "He has not only turned his back on this victim but he has also turned his back on the forensic, medical and other physical evidence in this case. 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’re raped or sexually assaulted, who will?"
Ms. Diallo stood by his side, but said nothing. In an interview, Mr. Thompson said the meeting with prosecutors lasted no more than 30 seconds. Mr. Thompson said that he and Ms. Diallo entered a conference room where the three main prosecutors on the case, Artie McConnell, Joan Illuzzi-Orbon and Ann Prunty, sat.According to Mr. Thompson, when he and Ms. Diallo sat down, Ms. Illuzzi-Orbon said something to the effect of: "Nafi, we’re going to dismiss the case. You have lied to us repeatedly. We can’t win the case."
Source: the New York Times.
The DA apparently decided that a jury would have a difficult time differentiating between her lies to get admitted into the country and her charges that a powerful foreign politician had forced her to perform oral sex in a brief encounter in his hotel room.
For Strauss-Kahn, who had been considered the best hope for France's Socialist Party to oust President Nicolas Sarkozy, the next challenge is how forgiving the French will be to a politician whose reputation as a womanizer has been fully aired on the world's media — and who may yet face a civil suit in France by a former journalist who says he tried to rape years ago.
Read more at the New York Times.