LAWYERS INVOLVED in the Dominique Strauss-Kahn sexual assault case have been giving early indications of what the core of their cases will be.
Strauss-Kahn has been charged with sexually assaulting a 32-year-old hotel maid at the Sofitel Hotel in New York at the weekend. He is currently being held at the notorious Rickers Island prison in New York and has been put on suicide watch.
The charges brought against him include attempted rape, unlawful imprisonment and forcible touching.
Defence attorney Benjamin Brafman said he believes the forensic evidence “will not be consistent with a forcible encounter”.
Yesterday, Jeffrey Shapiro, the lawyer for the woman who brought the charges against Strauss-Kahn, said he had no doubt his client was telling the truth. Shapiro added:
There is no way in which there is any aspect of this event which could be construed consensual in any manner. This is nothing other than a physical, sexual assault by this man on this young woman.
Pressure to resign
US Treasury SecretaryTimothy Geithner has given the strongest indication yet that Dominique Strauss-Kahn will have to step down as head of the IMF, saying he cannot run the organisation in the wake of the charges made against him.
The 62-year-old Frenchman had been hotly tipped to win the Socialist Party nomination for France’s 2012 presidential elections. He has been under increasing pressure to resign his IMF post in the wake of his arrest in the US. Today, the BBC reports that Timothy Geithner has joined calls for Strauss-Kahn to step down.
Yesterday in Brussels, Austria’s finance minister Maria Fekter said Strauss-Kahn had to realise that he was “hurting the institution”.
- Additional reporting by the AP
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