Strauss-Kahn Shows Justice for Accused/Accuser Uses Same Rules

If Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. had decided to codename his investigation of former International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn, he might have called it “Operation Rock and a Hard Place.”

Eleven weeks ago, with Strauss-Kahn headed to a country that didn’t extradite, Vance had to decide whether to charge the French presidential hopeful with sexually attacking a hotel maid, based on his assessment of a credible claim. Six weeks after he said the maid admitted telling lies about her background and the aftermath of the alleged attack, Vance is grappling with whether to drop the charges even though there’s evidence of a crime.

Lawyers for Strauss-Kahn and the maid are demanding that Vance make opposite decisions. Without indicating any doubts about pursuing the case, Vance has said he’s sticking to the principle he laid down on July 1, when prosecutors told the judge in charge of the case that the maid, Nafissatou Diallo, had lied and had other “credibility issues.”

“As prosecutors, our duty is to do what is right in every case, without fear or favor wherever that leads,” Vance said after the court hearing. “Our judicial system seeks to ensure fairness and justice for both victims and defendants.”

Since July 1, Vance, 57, has provided no public details of his investigation of the alleged May 14 attack in Strauss-Kahn’s Sofitel suite and set no deadline to finish his probe. A status hearing on the case was postponed to Aug. 1 from July 18 and then to Aug. 23, giving him more time to complete his mission.

After Vance’s disclosure, Straus-Kahn’s lawyers asked him to drop the charges of sexual assault and attempted rape, a demand echoed by French supporters of the 62-year-old ex-IMF chief, who is known as “DSK” in France.

On the Offensive

Going on the offensive, Diallo’s lawyer Kenneth Thompson demanded the same day that the district attorney pursue the case, claiming the 32-year-old maid hadn’t lied about her core claim: Strauss-Kahn had attacked her. Through statements and press interviews Thompson and Diallo, a political refugee from Guinea, have since attempted to explain or deny Vance’s “credibility issues” and other damaging allegations.

A translation digest done for Vance of conversations Diallo had in her native dialect about Strauss-Kahn with a jailed friend quoted her as saying: “He’s got a lot of money. I know what to do,” according to a person familiar with it. After she, Thompson and prosecutors reviewed the taped conversations for hours July 27, he told reporters she’d never said that.

“What she said was, ‘He is powerful and rich,’ during one conversation,” that was “merged together” with another in the translation, Thompson said.

Drop the Charges

Diallo took her damaged case to the public by revealing her identity in tearful print and broadcast interviews last weekend. She detailed her side of the story and denied a New York Post story, based on defense sources, that she is a prostitute.

“I want justice,” she told ABC News. “I want him to go to jail,” adding: “God is my witness. I’m telling the truth. From my heart. God knows that. And he knows that.”

In a statement, Strauss-Kahn lawyers said Diallo is “the first accuser to conduct a media campaign to persuade a prosecutor to pursue charges against an innocent person from whom she wants money.” Thompson said she plans to file a civil damages suit against Strauss-Kahn.

After the Aug. 1 status hearing was postponed, Strauss- Kahn’s lawyers asked that the charges be dropped by the new Aug. 23 date.

The French

Amid noisy demands from both sides, French officials and intellectuals have called Vance’s handling of the case a rush to judgment. Former Culture Minister Jacques Lang called DSK’s arrest and charging “a lynching.” French philosopher Bernard- Henri Levy said Vance, the son of a former U.S. secretary of state, had destroyed Strauss-Kahn’s presumption of innocence.

New York defense lawyers, normally critical of police and prosecutor tactics, took the opposite view. The initial decision to charge Strauss-Kahn, who pleaded not guilty, was the correct one, given the evidence available at the time, the nature of the crime and the flight risk Strauss-Kahn presented, defense lawyers such as Gerald Shargel said.

“They did everything they were supposed to do,” said Shargel, a criminal defense lawyer in New York for more than 30 years who also teaches criminal law at Brooklyn Law School. “This DSK case is like the perfect storm. The DA’s office felt it had its back against the wall and didn’t want him to leave the country. I don’t think their judgment calls are subject to being second-guessed.”

Swift Action

Records show authorities moved swiftly during the more than 14 hours between the alleged assault, which police said occurred around noon on May 14 at a Midtown Manhattan hotel, and Strauss- Kahn’s arrest at about 2:45 a.m. the next day at the Special Victims Squad office in East Harlem.

Vance spokeswoman Erin Duggan summed up the district attorney’s view of the case: “The accuser’s credible account of a sexual assault by a stranger was corroborated by multiple sources, including witnesses and evidence. It was vetted and appropriately presented to the grand jury under the time constraints and circumstances unique to this case. After indictment prosecutors continued their investigation and disclosed additional relevant information to the defense and to the court, as they are legally and ethically obligated to do.”

That tracks the assessment of the arrest and initial charges by Gerald Lefcourt, a New York-based criminal defense lawyer who has represented members of the Black Panthers and actor Russell Crowe. “They had probable cause, corroboration to the witness’s story when they made the arrest,” he said. “That was not, in any normal view of how the criminal justice system works in this country, a rush that wasn’t appropriate.”

‘On the Plane’

Brad Simon, a former federal prosecutor in New York who practices in France, said he doesn’t fault the decision to arrest Strauss-Kahn even after hearing the strong French criticism of U.S. authorities.

“He was already on the plane, which means that if they didn’t apprehend him, he’d be gone,” Simon said. “I’m a defense attorney, and I’m generally skeptical of prosecutors, but here, what choice did they have? The French wouldn’t have willingly turned him over. Just look how they’ve reacted since.”

Strauss-Kahn’s lawyer Benjamin Brafman declined to comment on defense lawyers’ view of the case. After prosecutors’ July 1 disclosures about the accuser’s credibility, Brafman said the case “should never have been brought to begin with.”

One reason for the strident response from France may be the different way the two countries’ justice systems work.

‘Very, Very Fast’

“In the U.S., things went very, very fast,” said Thomas Morin, a Paris-based lawyer at Linklaters LLP. “In France, you have to either file a complaint to the police or through a lawyer to a judge, and things don’t begin to move for several weeks or even months.”

Dominique Moisi, a founder and senior adviser at the French Institute for International Relations in Paris, said on France24 Television July 5 that the case would have been handled in France, “with greater discretion.”

“For a lot of French people, the U.S. system broke down,” he said. “They feel that the Americans provoked an enormous global scandal without bothering to zero in on the personality of the woman who was accusing DSK.”

In a letter to defense lawyers, Vance said Diallo’s credibility issues included telling prosecutors and a grand jury that after the alleged assault she’d fled his hotel room and hid in the hallway. She later said that after the incident she’d cleaned a nearby room, then returned to clean Strauss-Kahn’s suite before reporting the attack to her supervisor.

Diallo also told prosecutors on June 9 that she had lied in recounting how she’d been granted political asylum, including a tale about being gang raped.

Diallo’s Interviews

In on-the-record interviews published by Newsweek and broadcast by ABC News, Diallo, reiterated her claim that Strauss-Kahn had sexually assaulted her. Through Duggan, Vance declined to comment on her remarks, published July 24 and 25.

Without the benefit of her recent remarks at the time of the initial charges, police and prosecutors relied on what they had back then: The maid had identified Strauss-Kahn from a photo within hours of the alleged attack and picked him out of a police lineup at 4 p.m. the next day. A sexual encounter of some kind was corroborated by forensic DNA evidence police found at the scene, according to Assistant District Attorney Joan Illuzzi-Orbon.

“It’s DSK who put this whole thing in motion,” said Linda Fairstein, former chief of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Sex Crimes Unit, who unsuccessfully tried to get an United Nations official accused of a similar sex crime 20 years ago pulled off a plane as he headed for a no-extradition country. “It’s his semen on her clothes and in that hotel room; there’s no question a sexual encounter occurred. I don’t know what people expect of police. You have a victim who was found credible at the time.”

No Special Treatment

Fairstein, who was never able to prosecute the official, disputed any suggestion that police and prosecutors should have safeguarded Strauss-Kahn’s reputation by not placing him under arrest and asking him to remain in the U.S. during an investigation of the woman’s claims.

“If he were a French dishwasher from a restaurant in Paris he wouldn’t have been given that treatment,” she said. “A sexual encounter happened, and why in the world would he be entitled to a privilege that wouldn’t be extended to anyone else? It would have broken every police protocol to say ‘We’ll look into this, and we’ll get back to you.’”

Missteps

Once Strauss-Kahn was arrested, New York defense lawyers did say there were missteps in the way he was treated by police and prosecutors. The decision to parade him in handcuffs before reporters, news photographers and television cameras in a so- called perp walk was one cited by Levy as an abuse.

“This vision of Dominique Strauss-Kahn humiliated in chains, dragged lower than the gutter -- this degradation of a man whose silent dignity couldn’t be touched, was not just cruel, it was pornographic,” Levy said in a July 2 column for the Daily Beast, an online news website.

Lefcourt, a former president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said that “in a perfect world, there are a few things we know they could have avoided. First they created this monstrous scene with the perp walk, and then they asked for no bail.”

The decision to oppose bail was seen as cruel by French critics such as Levy. Defense lawyers said it was a tactical misstep because keeping Strauss-Kahn in custody set a legal clock ticking to get a grand jury to indict him, making the charges formal.

Assistant Manhattan District Attorney John “Artie” McConnell called Strauss-Kahn “an incurable flight risk” at a May 16 bail hearing.

New York Law

Under New York law, if a suspect remains in custody without bail after arrest and arraignment, prosecutors must indict or release the suspect within five or six weekdays, depending on the day of arrest.

By holding Strauss-Kahn in custody, “they really boxed themselves in a corner,” said Henry Mazurek, a New York defense lawyer. “They didn’t have the opportunity to make a review of the evidence and a background check of the complainant, so they ended up relying almost entirely on her and the physical evidence.”

Should Vance decide to drop the charges after his investigation is complete, Strauss-Kahn may fare worse in France, where he faces a similar accusation, said Denis Chemla, a Paris-based Herbert Smith LLP partner who is also licensed to practice law in New York.

The Banon Case

French writer Tristane Banon has told Paris police that Strauss-Kahn attempted to rape her eight years ago. A preliminary investigation of the matter began July 8, Paris prosecutors said. Strauss-Kahn sued her for libel after her complaint. Vance’s prosecutors met with her lawyer July 19. They may interview her as part of their investigation, a person familiar with the case said.

“For all the criticisms we have of the American system, nothing can erase that the American system is fairer and quicker than ours,” Chemla said. “The most terrible thing is that the guy is going to be under investigation for two and a half years and after two and a half years, nothing will come of it. That’s the French system. While in the American system, one can see a prosecutor who at the end of the week says ‘Oh hold on, there’s a problem.’ We’re not capable of doing that.”

The case is People v. Strauss-Kahn, 11-02526, New York State Supreme Court, New York County (Manhattan).

Details emerge of woman's jailhouse call as media pursue Strauss-Kahn

One day after a stunning court revelation about an accuser's lack of honesty in the Dominique Strauss-Kahn sexual assault case, media across New York descended on the freed financier with a renewed sense of vigor.
On Saturday, the former head of the International Monetary Fund was pursued by photographers and news teams across Manhattan. After emerging from his posh Tribecca townhouse, Strauss-Kahn and his security detail blazed through downtown city streets in a black Mercedes sedan, darting in and out of roadways in an

attempt to outrun camera crews in pursuit.
Ten vehicles from an array of different news teams gave chase, including at least three photographers perched atop motorcycles, according to CNN producer Raelyn Johnson.
Interest surrounding the scandal reached a fever-pitch Friday when a New York judge released Strauss-Kahn from house arrest after prosecutors presented evidence questioning the credibility of his accuser.
Also, less than two days after the alleged victim said the attack occurred, she spoke over the phone with a boyfriend in an Arizona jail in a recorded conversation.
A source with knowledge of the investigation told CNN that she said that "she's fine and this person is rich and there's money to be made," as originally reported by The New York Times.
The source also said the alleged victim had bank accounts in multiple states.
"She was getting deposits of several thousands of dollars at a time from people she knew, potentially involved in drug dealing," the source told CNN.
The 32-year-old immigrant admitted to prosecutors that she lied about the specifics of her whereabouts following the alleged attack, the details of an asylum application and information she put on tax forms, according to documents filed in court Friday by prosecutors.
Meanwhile, in her native Guinea, residents in the nation's capital expressed their support for the alleged victim, despite her tainted testimony.
"Really, you should have sympathy on her," said Mabity Boungoura in the Guinean capital of Conakry. "When you do something bad to a woman, you need to recognize and accept it."
While the case has taken a dramatic turn, it has not been dismissed, Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance said Friday.
The indictment and charges -- including criminal sexual acts and sexual abuse -- against Strauss-Kahn, 62, still stand, he said.
Strauss-Kahn's lawyers said the alleged victim told "substantial lies about her own background and the facts of this case."
The development is particularly stunning given prior statements by New York authorities, who spoke forcefully about the accuser's credibility. It appears to leaves the felony case against Strauss-Kahn seriously undermined, despite DNA evidence of sexual contact recovered from the hotel suite.
The judge said authorities will continue to withhold the French financier's passport, but that he is free to travel in the United States.
Prosecutors said Friday that the woman admitted to lying in her application for asylum in the United States, claiming she had been a victim of a gang rape. She cried when she first told prosecutors about the rape, but in a subsequent interview admitted it never occurred.
In angry remarks delivered outside the courthouse, the woman's attorney, Kenneth Thompson, admitted problems with his client's credibility, but the bottom line, he said, is that she was attacked.
"That was true the day it happened and it is true today," he said, describing in chilling detail the account the woman gave of her attack and the bruising on her body.
"She has described that sexual assault many times to the prosecutors and to me. And she has never once changed a single thing about that account."

UPDATE 1-Clashes in Greece, parliament expected to approve bill(Photo-Video)

Greek police clashed with protesters outside parliament in the early hours of Thursday ahead of a vote expected to approve a final austerity bill needed to secure international aid and avert a debt default. The government of Prime Minister George Papandreou, which won a first vote on Wednesday by 155 to 138 votes, expects to pass the second and final bill covering 28 billion euros in tax hikes, spending targets and privatisations agreed as part of an EU/IMF bailout. Parliament resumes debate at 9:30 a.m. (0630 GMT) and

the decisive vote is not expected before 2 p.m. (1100 GMT). Before the debate, it had not yet been decided whether more than one vote would be needed to pass it. "I expect that the MPs who backed the mid-term plan will also vote for the implementation law," government spokesman Ilias Mosialos said in a television interview. World stocks rallied on Thursday for the third day running and the euro rose to its highest dollar level in 20 days on relief that Greece looked set to avoid the euro zone's first debt default. The optimism was mixed with concern though over whether the government will be able to implement the unpopular cuts in practice to meet a tight schedule imposed by the EU and the IMF. "There are still a lot of unanswered questions about the effective implementation of austerity measures, given the backdrop of increasing public anger in Greece," said Omer Esiner, chief market analyst at Commonwealth Foreign Exchange in Washington. Implementing the measures will be hard for the government, which has fallen behind the opposition in opinion polls and has faced heated criticism from its own deputies during the parliament debate. Unions, which paralysed the country for 48 hours earlier this week, have vowed to oppose privatisations and other austerity steps. Anger among the Greek population was underlined by violence which on Syntagma Square outside parliament as Wednesday's votes on the first bill were being counted. Doctors working with the demonstrators said they had treated at least 25 people for minor injuries and hundreds with respiratory problems at the adjacent Syntagma metro station. At least 40 police officers were hurt, the police union said. Hooded youths and police fought battles into the night, choking the city centre with tear gas and smoke from petrol bombs. The protesters set fire to the post office in the building where the Finance Ministry is located, and tried to set ablaze a bank. Across the square, the luxury King George Hotel was evacuated. Parliament must pass both bills for the European Union and International Monetary Fund to release a 12-billion-euro loan -- essential for Greece to meet debt payments in July -- under a 110-billion-euro bailout agreed in May 2010. The laws are also needed for talks on a planned second and longer-term bailout of about the same size, which will include some 30 billion euros in private-sector participation. Locked out of bond markets, Greece needs the extra cash to avert default and keep the debt crisis from spilling over to the rest of the euro zone. Papandreou, who reshuffled his cabinet earlier this month to secure support for the bills, said he was determined to push through reforms. "Today, I am more determined than ever," Papandreou said. "Now is the time to tackle everything that is wrong, with everything that hurts us, that holds us back." Thursday's vote enables individual budget measures and creates a privatisation agency. The conservative New Democracy opposition, which voted against the first bill, said it would support some of the measures in the second. "We will reject it in principle. However, we will support the privatisations mechanism as well as the articles on spending," said New Democracy deputy Yannis Vroutsis. Still, analysts said the real challenge will come after the bill is voted on and the international money secured. "The implementation law will also pass, without problems," said Costas Panagopoulos, head of ALCO pollsters. "The real question is whether Papandreou will use this vote to move forward with these crucial reforms."

IMF State-Backed Cyber-Attack Follows Hacks of Atomic Lab, G-20

The data theft from International Monetary Fund computers by hackers said to be linked to a foreign government follows incidents against companies and governments that illustrate the growth of cyber-attacks as an espionage tool. The IMF hack resulted in the loss of a “large quantity” of data, including documents and e-mails, according to a person familiar with the incident, a security expert who declined to be identified because he wasn’t authorized to speak on the subject. This year, the Group of 20 and

Oak Ridge National Laboratory have also come under cyber-attack. The person said the intrusion was state-based, without saying which government is thought to be behind it. The Washington-based IMF approved a record $91.7 billion in emergency loans last year and provides a third of bailout packages in Europe. “The value of what’s being lost in these cyber-attacks is increasing at a very fast rate,” Sami Saydjari, the founder of Cyber Defense Agency in Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin, said in an interview this year before the latest attacks. “There are two perpetrators that are most concerning. One is organized crime, the other is nation-states, and they are both quite serious.” Google Inc.’s computer networks were broken into this month by hackers who gained access to the private Gmail accounts of senior U.S. officials. Defense contractor Lockheed Martin Corp. was hacked in May. Computers at Hopkinton, Massachusetts-based EMC Corp.’s RSA Security division were infiltrated in March by hackers who stole technology used to protect other U.S. government and corporate networks. Vocational School Google, based in Mountain View, California, traced the incursion on its networks to hackers at a vocational school associated with the Chinese military. Kevin Kempskie, an RSA spokesman, didn’t specify who was linked to the RSA attack. The same attackers used data stolen from RSA to gain access to Bethesda, Maryland-based Lockheed Martin’s computer network, RSA said this month. The pattern of the attacks against RSA and Lockheed Martin confirmed RSA’s suspicion that the hackers were seeking national security information and weren’t out for financial gain, according to RSA. David Hawley, an IMF spokesman, on June 11 declined to discuss details of the attack on the fund. Fund employees were alerted about hackers this month and “strongly requested not to open e-mails and video links without authenticating the source,” according to a copy of a staff memo provided to Bloomberg News. ‘Phishing Activity’ An e-mail from the IMF’s chief information officer, Jonathan Palmer, warned employees of “increased phishing activity.” Phishing is the practice of obtaining information such as computer user names or passwords under false pretenses. Palmer instructed employees on how to detect and respond to cyber-attackers, warning them not to divulge their passwords or open “unexpected documents.” According to one IMF memo, the fund’s network connection to the World Bank was severed “as a precautionary measure.” On June 1, the IMF’s information technology department sent an e-mail to employees with the subject line “Important Notice: Virus Attacks.” It warned of attempts to hack into the system. “Staff are strongly requested NOT TO OPEN e-mails and video links without authenticating the source,” the e-mail said. Anup Ghosh, chief executive officer of Invincea Inc., a Fairfax, Virginia-based cyber-security company, said the warning suggests computer worms were downloaded into the IMF’s networks through so-called spear phishing, which involves sending e-mails that appear to come from colleagues or other officials. He said the technique is associated with directed attacks for espionage. Oak Ridge In an attack on the Oak Ridge National Laboratory this year, a malicious program was downloaded through an e-mail purporting to come from the human resources department. Ten percent of the 570 recipients clicked on a link, infecting of several machines connected to the lab’s network, Ghosh said. The Tennessee-based lab was founded in 1943 to support the Manhattan Project and works with the U.S. Energy Department. In February, France’s budget minister, Francois Baroin, said the finance ministry was targeted in a cyber-attack aimed at stealing files on the G-20 summit in Paris. The attack was traced to Internet addresses in China, while there was no evidence it was directly linked to the Chinese government, the French publication Paris Match said at the time. Several countries are known to use hacking as a tool in espionage, including China, according to Mike Hayden, a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency. ‘Very Aggressive’ “China is a state that is very aggressive at collecting intelligence through these means,” Hayden said in an interview with Bloomberg News in February. “They are not bashful at all.” Google said this month that the latest breach of its network appeared linked to the same sophisticated attackers who broke into its computers and the computers of at least 20 other major U.S. companies in 2009 in what was known as Operation Aurora. Leaked U.S. diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks said that attack was directed by high-level officials in the Chinese government security apparatus. Wang Baodong, a spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington, didn’t respond to a request yesterday for comment. “Our species has never put as much of its knowledge into the electromagnetic spectrum as it has now,” Hayden said. “Everything important exists out there in ones and zeroes.”

French Left in crisis talks over Strauss-Kahn case

French Socialists, thrown into turmoil by the sex assault case against their preferred presidential contender, will meet for crisis talks on Tuesday to think about a new plan of attack for a 2012 election.

With a July deadline fast approaching to enter the Socialist selection contest, party leader Martine Aubry will urge members to close ranks and look beyond the charges against Dominique Strauss-Kahn that have shocked the world.

Until this weekend, Strauss-Kahn appeared to be the clear frontrunner to win the election and unseat conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy. Opinion polls have put Sarkozy in third place behind far-right leader Marine Le Pen.

On Monday, the IMF chief was denied bail on charges he tried to rape a chambermaid in a New York hotel room. The accusations are a crushing blow for a man who has overseen world finance as head of the International Monetary Fund.

"Shattered" at the events of the past two days, Aubry told reporters Tuesday's meeting would be about pulling together and focusing on the future. She said Strauss-Kahn, who will plead not guilty, must be viewed as innocent until proven otherwise.

Aubry is under increasing pressure from fellow Socialists to declare she will contest the party's presidential primary to try to spur the Left to a presidential victory for the first time in a quarter of a century.

But her reluctance to throw her hat in the ring has led some to question her appetite for the presidential battle.

"We have a timetable and today is not the moment" to declare a candidacy, she told France Info radio on Tuesday. "We are not changing anything in our timetable" for the primary.

SARKOZY STILL FACES BATTLE

Le Pen -- who is gaining support as she plays on gloom over falling purchasing power and tension over immigrants -- stands to gain a point or two from the scandal. Sarkozy could see a similar lift, and his campaign will still focus on beating her in round one so he can face the left in a run-off.

"Sarkozy only benefits marginally from Strauss-Kahn's arrest," said Eurasia Group analyst Antonio Barroso, noting he would still suffer from centrists defecting from his camp.

With the IMF chief seen out of the running, Aubry is under pressure to throw her hat into the ring alongside former party leader Francois Hollande and come up with new ideas to match what would have been a smooth Strauss-Kahn campaign.

With Strauss-Kahn out of the picture, the left's chances of re-election rest on Hollande and Aubry, both veteran left-wing figures with a strong support base, but who may lack the sparkle and sophistication to rally the vote they need.

Aubry, 60, was the architect of France's 35-hour work week in the late 1990s and has political clout as the daughter of former European Commission President Jacques Delors.

She has support from party militants but is an uncharismatic campaigner and may struggle to find ways to fire up left-wing voters. She has also struggled as party chief to unite a party riven by divisions since its 2007 election defeat by Sarkozy.

Hollande, 56, has a weak profile as he has never been a government minister and lacks international experience.

But in Strauss-Kahn's absence he would be the favorite to run, and is judged to have better campaigning skills than Aubry. He would also outshine his former partner Segolene Royal, who lost the 2007 presidency for the left but plans another try.

A small-sample Harris Interactive opinion poll for Le Parisien daily conducted on Sunday and Monday -- the first survey since Strauss-Kahn's arrest -- found Hollande could win 49 percent backing in the Socialist primary and Aubry 23 percent.

Analysts also expect more candidates to emerge, namely former prime minister Laurent Fabius, who would be by far the weightiest contender on the left, and Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoe, who is popular for his imaginative city projects.

Strauss-Kahn sex case throws open election race

The arrest of IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn on sexual assault charges has plunged France's Socialists into turmoil and thrown wide open the race for the presidency.

France was mesmerized on Monday by TV images of a handcuffed Strauss-Kahn, a center-leftist viewed until now as the frontrunner for the 2012 election, being led away by police for DNA tests over the alleged assault in a New York hotel.

His lawyers said Strauss-Kahn would plead not guilty to charges that he tried to rape a chambermaid at the hotel after chasing her, naked, down a corridor and trying to lock her in a room.

While politicians from all parties said Strauss-Kahn, popularly known by his initials DSK, should be presumed innocent until proven guilty, political commentators were unanimous in pronouncing the last rites on his political career.

"One thing is certain: Dominique Strauss-Kahn will not be the next president of the French republic," the conservative daily Le Figaro said in an editorial.

"In the space of 15 days the new idol of the French left has exploded. Such a swift disintegration has rarely been seen," editorialist Paul-Henri du Limbert wrote.

Strauss-Kahn's arrest is a big setback to the opposition Socialist Party, which kicks off its primary in July as part of its campaign to win its first presidential election in 24 years.

"The Socialists have lost the candidate who was riding high in the polls ... (and was) the best placed to beat (President) Nicolas Sarkozy," wrote the left-leaning Liberation newspaper. Its headline said: "DSK Out."

Before his arrest, Strauss-Kahn had been the subject of mounting media commentary on his lifestyle. Critics accused him of a fondness for women, an easy relationship with money and a luxury lifestyle that sat uneasily with his Socialist credentials.

Liberation published comments he made at the end of April when he said the three most difficult issues for his presidential bid would be: "Money, women and my Jewishness"

"Yes I like women ... So what? ... For years there's been talk of photos of massive orgies, but nothing has ever come out .... So, let them show them," the paper quoted him as saying.

Political commentators said pictures of Strauss-Kahn being led away by police in handcuffs would make it all but impossible for the former finance minister to run for the presidency.

"Only one person has said 'I am ready psychologically', since 2008, and that is Francois Hollande," he said. But he added: "There are others who could come out of the woodwork and make themselves heard, like Laurent Fabius for example."
Fabius, a former Socialist prime minister and finance minister, said at the weekend the party was losing touch with working class voters, a move Darmon interpreted as Fabius testing the waters for a possible bid.
Senior Socialist leaders are due to meet on Tuesday to discuss the crisis.
The Les Echos business daily said centrists like former ecology minister Jean-Louis Borloo might also benefit.
On the right, Sarkozy's UMP party kept a low profile. Some saw Strauss-Kahn's legal woes boosting the chances of the unpopular president, but others suggested that Hollande's cleaner image could make him a greater threat than DSK ever was.
"On paper, the affair seems to relaunch the chances of the head of state, whose re-election seemed, even for many on the right, impossible," Les Echos said.
But one close Sarkozy aide told the paper: "Strauss-Kahn was the easiest adversary. He wiped out Sarkozy's faults."