Former IMF boss walks after judge drops case
DOMINIQUE Strauss-Kahn yesterday walked from a New York court alongside his wife after a judge dropped the sex charges against him.
The former IMF boss smiled to the scrum of reporters, branding the last four months a “nightmare” and saying he is looking forward to returning to “a more normal life”.
He also said he was “most deeply grateful to my wife and family,” and thanked his friends who “believed in my innocence”.
Strauss-Kahn was last night still awaiting the outcome of a last-ditch appeal from the lawyers of hotel maid Nafissatou Diallo, who maintains the former French presidential hopeful forced her to perform a sex act and tried to rape her.
Legal experts said the appeal for a special prosecutor to be drafted in to work on the case has almost no chance of succeeding.
State prosecutors had recommended the case be dropped after Diallo repeatedly lied about her past. They told the judge that if they could not believe her testimony beyond reasonable doubt that there was no reason a jury should.
Strauss-Kahn faces a civil lawsuit against him, and a separate inquiry in France, where a writer alleged Strauss-Kahn tried to rape her during an interview in 2003.