Strauss-kahn called women 'equipment' in text messages
LILLE, France, March 30 (AFP) Disgraced former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-kahn admitted to police that he referred to young women guests at sex parties as “equipment” in text messages, according to a report Wednesday.
The respected daily Le Monde said it had seen a confidential transcript of StraussKahn's police questioning from before he was charged with “aggravated pimping”, in which he confirmed he had used the “inappropriate” language.
Strauss-kahn's legal team reacted with fury to the leak, accusing Le Monde of quoting selectively from the document and declaring they would lodge a legal complaint with authorities alleging their client's rights had been violated.
Strauss-kahn admits he attended a string of orgies in various cities, but insists he had no idea that many of the female guests were paid to attend, telling police in the reported interview that he may have been “naive”.
Prosecutors, however, believe that he knew the women had been procured and paid for by executives who corruptly charged the parties to company expenses. On Monday they charged Strauss-kahn with complicity in a vice ring.
“Do you want to (can you?) come to a great sexy nightclub in Madrid with me (and some equipment) on July 4?” StraussKahn once asked, in a text message to a businessman friend who has also been charged in the same case.
In another message he referred to a “gift” and in another to “luggage”.
According to Le Monde's account of his recent interrogation, Strauss-kahn admitted he had used what he now admits were “unsuitable and inappropriate” terms to refer to “a person of the female sex”.
The report confirms that Strauss-kahn's public defence, that he had no idea that any of the women at the parties were paid sex workers, is the same he had given investigators before the charges against him were lodged.
He also insisted in his statement none of the women was subjected to force or pressure to take part in sex, insisting that statements from some of them to the contrary were “lies”, “mistaken” or made “under pressure”. Strauss-kahn claims immunity in US sex case
Lawyers for Dominique Strauss-kahn told a US court that a maid's lawsuit alleging sexual assault should be thrown out because the French politician had diplomatic immunity at the time.
Judge Douglas Mckeon said he would rule quickly following a 90-minute hearing in a Bronx courthouse where a StraussKahn attorney argued that the disgraced former head of the IMF had “the same kind of diplomatic immunity that other highranking officials and diplomats enjoy.”the civil suit, seeking unspecified damages, “must be dismissed,” attorney Amit Mehta said in New York state court.
A lawyer for Nafissatou Diallo, the Manhattan hotel maid whose accusation of sexual assault triggered the spectacular downfall of a man tapped to be the next French president, ridiculed the notion of dismissal.
Douglas Wigdor said Strauss-kahn “brutally sexually assaulted Ms Diallo” on May 14 last year and now wished to use the immunity argument to “deny Ms Diallo's right to a trial in this case and delay these proceedings.”strauss-kahn, who was managing director of the International Monetary Fund at the time, admits consensual sex took place with Diallo in his luxury Sofitel suite, but denies assault. New York prosecutors initially charged him, but then dismissed the case because of concerns over the maid's credibility.
Strauss-kahn had some level of immunity. However, a key sticking point appears to be whether that only extended to him in his official duties.
Mckeon, who spent most of the hearing in a rigorous probe of Mehta's arguments, at one point referred to the hotel incident and asked drily: “You're not contending that he was in the furtherance of the (IMF) business?”the judge did not rule in court, but promised “to expeditiously issue a decision.”neither Strauss-kahn, who is simultaneously facing charges in France over an international prostitution network, nor Diallo, were present in the wood-paneled courtroom. Several dozen journalists, many of them from France, attended.
Unless Strauss-kahn decides to pay Diallo an out-of-court financial settlement, Wednesday's arguments could prove to be only the first salvo of a drawn-out and bitter legal battle.