NY police say IMF head Strauss-Kahn in custody

IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn was taken into custody on Saturday at JFK airport in New York and was being questioned in regard to a sexual assault, a New York police spokesman told Reuters.

Spokesman Paul Browne said the woman who filed the complaint against Strauss-Kahn, 62, was a 32-year-old chambermaid who fled the room after the incident.

Strauss-Kahn, a possible Socialist candidate in the French presidential election next April, left the hotel after the incident and boarded an Air France aircraft scheduled to depart for Paris, the police spokesman said.

"The NYPD realized he had fled, he had left his cell phone behind," Browne said. "We learned he was on an Air France plane. They held the plane and he was taken off and is now being held in police custody for questioning."

Browne said Strauss-Kahn had not been charged.

Police said the alleged incident took place at the upscale Sofitel hotel on West 44th Street near Times Square.

The chambermaid "was brought by EMS (emergency medical services) to the Roosevelt Hotel, where she was treated for minor injuries," Brown said.

Strauss-Kahn took over the International Monetary Fund in November 2007. Before that, he was a member of the French National Assembly and a professor of economics at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/15/us-strausskahn-arrest-idUSTRE74D29F20110515

More to come

Little different than Ensign, or Santorum, or the like.

He is a lot different in many ways, than Ensign and Santorum. Sarkozy would be a better comparison to those two.

Odd that someone like him would be this foolish.

He has not been charged it says. But he has certainly been convicted in the court of public opinion.

I would wait a while before accepting all of this as fact.

It's been said French opinion polls have shown Strauss-Kahn is the only potential Socialist politician who could beat both Sarkozy and Marine Le Pen in the first round of the next Presidential elections, and so could go on to become President in the second round (on votes against either Sarkozy or the Front National). If no Socialist gets through the first round, then Sarkozy would continue to be The Man (on votes against the Front National).

already started a smear campaign against him in France. Not this, but still.

How fortunate for Sarkozy that he was foolish enough to do himself in! I wish there was someone else who could challenge him because even if this turned out to be a Rovian stunt, it will be hard to erase the suspicion in the minds of many people. If it is, iow, a lot of damage has been done.

We'll have to wait and see what he has to say. He was to appear in court this morning and has apparently been charged. His attorney says he will plead 'not guilty'.

This was strangely clumsy for someone at his level. CHECK HIS HEALTH.

I've read quite a few articles with similar info to this one. Full article is well worth reading:


Strauss-Kahn puts a new face on IMF
Joseph Stiglitz
May 11, 2011


Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/business/strausskahn-puts-a-new-face-on-imf-20110510-1eh4n.html#ixzz1MNgJ71N8

THE annual northern spring meeting of the International Monetary Fund was notable in marking the fund's effort to distance itself from its long-standing tenets on capital controls and labour-market flexibility. It appears that a new IMF has gradually, and cautiously, emerged under the leadership of Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

~~~

For progressives, these abysmal facts are part of the standard litany of frustration and justified outrage. What is new is that the IMF has joined the chorus. As Strauss-Kahn concluded in a recent speech: "Ultimately, employment and equity are building blocks of economic stability and prosperity, of political stability and peace. This goes to the heart of the IMF's mandate. It must be placed at the heart of the policy agenda."

Strauss-Kahn is proving a sagacious leader. We can only hope that governments and financial markets heed his words.

I'm not so worried about the party. Educated people can separate one man's antics from a party.
France is a smaller country and its easier to communicate politically in that environment.

IMF head or not, he was fleeing the country. If he is guilty, he needs to do serious jail time.

Power corrupts, etc.

Just off Times Square and he has to force some poor chambermaid to perform oral sex? Did this idiot know he could find whatever he wanted with a simple phone call? Hell, the hotel concierge would probably have set up anything he liked just for the asking.

WEIRD.

what's "available".

Especially someone in the position of head of the IMF.

I'm not saying forced sex is about sex. I know it's some violent sicko power trip. I'm just saying that someone in a position of power like this has so many other options besides rape and racing to the plane to escape, especially in the locale he was in at the time.

I'm just trying to make some sense of what appears to be a totally senseless act.

Which makes this all the more strange.

How can someone who heads the IMF, one of finance capital's primary instruments for extortion on a global scale and enforcer of neo-liberal orthodoxy, be considered a socialist?

I wouldn't be surprised if he thought he could rape a working-class woman (likely Hispanic) and get away with it.