Former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn was indicted yesterday on sexual assault charges but ordered released on bail by a New York judge after agreeing to house arrest and to post $1 million in cash.
New York State Supreme Court Judge Michael Obus said that Mr Strauss-Kahn, 62, can be released on one million USD cash bail, and placed under 24-hour home detention with electronic monitoring – conditions that had been proposed by his lawyers. Mr Strauss-Kahn also has to put up a $5-million bond, surrender all travel documents and pay to have an armed guard with him at all times.
The judge, hearing the new offer made by Mr Strauss-Kahn’s defence team yesterday, was different to the one who turned down bail on Monday. In fact Judge Melissa Jackson had refused to reconsider her decision even after lawyer Benjamin Brafman raised the idea of an ankle monitoring bracelet.
Judge Michael Obus agreed to free the former head of the International Monetary Fund on bail shortly after he was formally indicted. An arraignment hearing in which the exact charges will be revealed was set for June 6.
As Mr Strauss-Kahn arrived, looking clean shaven and wearing a jacket and shirt, the former IMF chief smiled at his American-born wife, French TV journalist Anne Sinclair, who looked red-eyed but calm. The hearing came just hours after Mr Strauss-Kahn resigned from the IMF vowing to clear his name after being charged in the alleged attack on a 32-year-old chambermaid in a luxury New York hotel suite on Saturday.
The prosecution contends that Mr Strauss-Kahn, was seen rushing from his hotel room on Saturday fleeing the scene after sexually assaulting and attempting to rape the woman, an immigrant from West Africa.
His flight was “unusually hasty,” prosecutor John McConnell told a packed New York court. “His exit from that crime scene certainly suggests that something had gone on,” he said, referring to the man once seen as a strong contender to be the next French president.
But Mr Strauss-Kahn’s defence team argued that he did not flee the Sofitel Hotel on Saturday. Mr Strauss-Kahn checked out of the hotel at 12.28 p.m. and “proceeded to a previously scheduled lunch a few blocks away” at 12.45 p.m. After lunch, he was driven to the airport for a 4.40 p.m. Paris-bound flight that had been scheduled one week in advance, the lawyers said.
They added that Strauss-Kahn “voluntarily disclosed” to hotel officials, when he called to inquire about his missing cell phone, that he was at the airport.
Meanwhile a man who had identified himself as the ‘brother’ of the woman who has accused former IMF chief Dominque Strauss-Kahn of sexual assault said yesterday that he is only a friend of the Sofitel maid.
The man, who works in a Harlem restaurant, was widely quoted by news outlets,. He said the alleged victim, a 32-year old immigrant from the West African nation of Guinea, had called him after the alleged sexual assault in Strauss-Kahn’s Sofitel hotel room.
However, when contacted yesterday after New York media reported that he was not the brother of the alleged victim, he said: “I am not a liar. I never said she was my blood sister. I don’t have a blood sister in the US. She is a good friend, a regular at the restaurant.”