Strauss-Kahn Accuser’s Call Alarmed Prosecutors

nytimes.com ^ | July 1, 2011 | JIM DWYER and MICHAEL WILSON

[Free ThinkerNY]

Twenty-eight hours after a housekeeper at the Sofitel New York said she was sexually assaulted by Dominique Strauss-Kahn, she spoke by phone to a boyfriend in an immigration jail in Arizona.

Investigators with the Manhattan district attorney’s office learned the call had been recorded and had it translated from a “unique dialect of Fulani,” a language from the woman’s native country, Guinea, according to a well-placed law enforcement official.

When the conversation was translated — a job completed only this Wednesday — investigators were alarmed: “She says words to the effect of, ‘Don’t worry, this guy has a lot of money. I know what I’m doing,’ ” the official said.

It was another ground-shifting revelation in a continuing series of troubling statements, fabrications and associations that unraveled the case and upended prosecutors’ view of the woman. Once, in the hours after she said she was attacked on May 14, she’d been a “very pious, devout Muslim woman, shattered by this experience,” the official said — a seemingly ideal witness.

Little by little, her credibility as a witness crumbled — she had lied about her immigration, about being gang raped in Guinea, about her experiences in her homeland and about her finances, according to two law enforcement officials. She had been linked to people suspected of crimes. She changed her account of what she did immediately after the encounter with Mr. Strauss-Kahn. Sit-downs with prosecutors became tense, even angry. Initially composed, she later collapsed in tears and got down on the floor during questioning. She became unavailable to investigators from the district attorney’s office for days at a time.

Now the phone call raised yet another problem: it seemed as if she hoped to profit from whatever occurred in Suite 2806.

[GAB-1955]

No, the summary execution of Kahn is still on for general principles; we're just adding an extra rope for the accuser.

[Mila]

" I never understood a hyphenated name for a man of his stature. The only guys with hyphenated names I know of are blue collar types married to white collar women."

In his case it's his family's surname. He is the son of a lawyer by the name of Gilbert Strauss-Kahn. I just thought of someone else with French roots who has a hyphenated surname,actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Her father, who was born in Paris, is billionaire Dreyfus Group heir Gerard Louis-Dreyfus.

[the invisib1e hand]

I wouldnt say he's without some culpability. It looks now like they had a fling and she decided to extort him.

there is justice, apparently.