‘Why I dropped IMF chief case’
NEW YORK: The prosecutor who charged Dominique Strauss-kahn with sexually assaulting a hotel maid has said he dropped the case because he wasn’t sure what had transpired between the two.
Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R Vance jr dropped the case against the former International Monetary Fund chief in August. Prosecutors noted then that the decision reflected doubts about the woman’s credibility, not “factual findings” on what had occurred in Strauss-kahn’s Manhattan hotel suite in May.
“I determined that I was no longer convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that I knew what happened – not that something didn’t happen, but whether we, as an office, knew beyond a rea- sonable doubt what happened,” Vance said at a law firm forum yesterday. “We did not have that quantum of confidence.”
Strauss-kahn was a strong French presidential candidate when Nafissatou Diallo told the authorities he had forced her to perform oral sex and had tried to rape her. He was jailed for several days before a term of house arrest. He resigned from the IMF within days.
Strauss-kahn, who is married, acknowledges an inappropriate sexual encounter but insists there was no violence.
He was freed without bail about six weeks later, when prosecutors revealed that they were losing faith in Diallo’s trustworthiness. They said she had not been truthful about her background and what she had done after the encounter.
“As a prosecutor, you have to follow facts as you have them, when you have them. When those facts change, you have to, as a responsible prosecutor, deal with” the changed outlook, Vance said. – Sapa-ap