Conspiracy and Real Politics

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Ex-IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s lawyer is suggesting that a political plot could have been behind sex assault charges that brought down DSK, according to AFP.

Washington attorney William Taylor referred to an upcoming investigative article in the New York Review of Books as evidence.

"We cannot now exclude the likelihood that Dominique Strauss-Kahn was the target of a deliberate effort to destroy him as a political force," Taylor said in a statement.

The article, an advanced copy of which was provided to AFP, analyzes key card data and other records from the New York Sofitel where Strauss-Kahn was staying when he allegedly sexually assaulted a room maid on May 14.

The article, due to be published on Saturday, notably questions whether a missing BlackBerry phone had been hacked by Strauss-Kahn’s political rivals.

It quotes unnamed sources close to Strauss-Kahn saying that he had been warned in a text message the day of his arrest that an email he’d sent to his wife from the BlackBerry had been read at the offices of Sarkozy’s UMP party in Paris.

The article also reports that a security camera caught the hotel’s head engineer, Brian Yearwood, high-fiving another man and appearing to dance in celebration, near to the maid, as she awaited the arrival of police.

Taylor said the article by investigative journalist Edward Jay Epstein poses "serious questions concerning behavior of officials" at Sofitel and at its parent Accor Group.

Epstein is a very solid investigative reporter, looks like we are going to get more beef added to the early suspicions (The Case for IMF Chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn Being Set-Up) I had, right from the outset, about the DSK case.

Reprinted with permission from Economic Policy Journal.

Here’s more evidence!

Hotel staff ‘celebrated’ after Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s arrest

By Jon Swaine

Staff at the hotel where the ex-International Monetary Fund chief allegedly assaulted the maid were filmed high-fiving and doing a “dance of celebration” after the incident in May, a new article claims.

Mr Strauss-Kahn also believed his mobile phone had been hacked after being told one of his private emails was seen in the headquarters of his rival Nicolas Sarkozy’s political party, it alleges.

The article, by the investigative journalist Edward Epstein in the New York Review of Books, will provoke fury among allies of Mr Strauss-Kahn, who have long maintained that he was set up.

He had been expected to challenge Mr Sarkozy for the French presidency next year, but was forced to resign from the IMF and withdraw from the presidential race after his arrest in New York.

Nafissatou Diallo, 32, claimed the 65-year-old tried to rape her when she arrived to clean his suite at the Manhttan Sofitel, before forcing her to give him oral sex. He was jailed and then detained under house arrest, but all charges were dropped when prosecutors found inconsistencies in Miss Diallo’s account.

Epstein claims that the hotel’s chief engineer, Brian Yearwood, was filmed by surveillance cameras meeting an unidentified colleague after sitting with Miss Diallo immediately following the incident.

Read the rest of the article

2011 Economic Policy Journal & The Daily Telegraph