“In virtually every substantive interview with prosecutors, despite entreaties to simply be truthful, she has not been truthful on matters great and small,” the lawyers wrote.
Diallo and her attorney, Kenneth Thompson, met briefly with representatives of the Manhattan district attorney's office to discuss the decision not to proceed with the prosecution. Thompson didn't say what had happened inside or reveal what his client was told, but he recited a short statement condemning prosecutors for their handling of the case.
“Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance has denied the right of a woman to get justice in a rape case,” he said. “He has not only turned his back on this innocent victim. But he has also turned his back on the forensic, medical and other physical evidence in this case.”
Thompson is asking a judge for an order disqualifying the prosecutor's office from handling the case. Diallo is also suing Strauss-Kahn, seeking to make him pay financially if not with his freedom, a move that the diplomat's lawyers said helped erode her credibility.
Strauss-Kahn is scheduled to go before a judge Tuesday. His lawyers, William Taylor and Benjamin Brafman, issued a statement saying that he and his family were grateful for the decision.
“We have maintained from the beginning of this case that our client is innocent,” they said. “We also maintained that there were many reasons to believe that Mr. Strauss-Kahn's accuser was not credible.”
The case captured international attention as a seeming cauldron of sex, violence, power and politics: A promising French presidential contender, known in his homeland as “the Great Seducer,” accused of a brutal and contemptuous attack on an African immigrant who had come to clean his plush suite at the Sofitel hotel.
The stakes were high for Strauss-Kahn, who resigned his IMF post, spent nearly a week behind bars and then spent possibly hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay for house arrest, as well for Vance, who was handling the biggest case he has had during his 18 months in office.
Strauss-Kahn, 62, was arrested after Diallo, 32, said he chased her down and forced her to perform oral sex. Strauss-Kahn denied the allegations, and his lawyers have said anything that happened wasn't forced.
Like many sexual assault cases, in which the accused and accuser are often the only eyewitnesses, the Strauss-Kahn case has hinged heavily on the woman's believability.
Early on, prosecutors stressed that Diallo had provided “a compelling and unwavering story” replete with “very powerful details” and buttressed by forensic evidence; his semen was found on her uniform. The police commissioner said seasoned detectives had found her credible.
But then prosecutors said July 1 they'd found the maid had told them a series of troubling falsehoods, including a persuasive but phony account of having been gang-raped in her native Guinea. She said she was echoing a story she'd told to enhance her 2003 application for political asylum. She told interviewers she was raped in her homeland under other circumstances and embellished it to get herself and her 15-year-old daughter a chance at a better life in the U.S.
She also wasn't consistent about what she did after her encounter with Strauss-Kahn, telling a grand jury she had hovered in a hallway when she actually returned to his and another room before consulting her boss, prosecutors said. She said the alleged discrepancy was a misunderstanding.
She also alluded to Strauss-Kahn's wealth in a recorded phone conversation with a jailed friend, and her bank account had been a repository for tens of thousands of dollars she couldn't explain, a law enforcement official has said.
She said a jailed man had used the bank account without telling her. As for the phone call, Thompson said, she mentioned Strauss-Kahn's money only to say that her alleged attacker was influential.
Prosecutors said in their filing that without other evidence verifying her claim that Strauss-Kahn attacked her, and sexually assaulted her by force, they weren't willing to base the case entirely on Diallo's truthfulness, when her credibility “cannot withstand the most basic evaluation.”
“The nature and number of the complainant's falsehoods leave us unable to credit her version of events beyond a reasonable doubt, whatever the truth may be about the encounter between the complainant and the defendant,” they said.
She sued Strauss-Kahn Aug. 8, seeking unspecified damages and promising to air other allegations that Strauss-Kahn accosted and attacked women in other locales.
His lawyers called her suit a meritless claim that proved she was out for money.
The Associated Press generally doesn't name people who report being sexually assaulted unless they agree to be identified or publicly identify themselves, as Diallo has done.
<한글 기사>
美검찰, 전 IMF 총재 성폭행 혐의 공소 취하
여종업원 피해자측 특별검사 선임 요청
미국 뉴욕 맨해튼 지방 검찰은 호텔 여종업원 을 성폭행한 혐의로 체포했던 도니미크 스트로스-칸 전 국제통화기금(IMF) 총재에 대한 공소 취하를 법원에 요청하기로 했다.
22일 (현지시간) 뉴욕 검찰은 성폭행을 당했다고 고발한 여종업원과 변호인을 검찰청사로 불러 이런 방침을 통보했다.
스트로스-칸 전 총재 변호인단은 "검찰이 사건을 법정에서 다투지 않기로 결정 한 데 대해 고맙게 생각한다"며 "우리는 처음부터 스트로스-칸 전 총재가 결백하다 고 믿고 있었다"고 검찰의 공소 취하 방침을 환영했다.
검찰의 공소 취하 결정은 사이러스 밴스 검사가 이날 오전 호텔 여종업원 나피 사투 디알로를 변호사와 함께 검찰청사로 불러들이면서 예고됐다.
그러나 디알로의 변호사 케네스 톰슨은 강하게 반발했다.
밴스 검사가 법률적, 의학적, 물리적 증거를 깡그리 무시했다고 비난한 톰슨 변호사는 "우리 어머니, 자매, 딸과 아내를 강간범으로부터 지키라고 뽑아준 검찰이 이런 결정을 내리면 누구한테 일을 맡기냐"고 목소리를 높였다.
톰슨 변호사는 이번 사건에 대한 검찰의 처리가 충분하지 않았고 문제가 많았다면서 특별검사 선임을 요청했다.
프랑스 차기 대통령 후보로 거론되던 스트로크-칸 전 총재는 지난 5월 뉴욕 맨해튼 소피텔 호텔에서 여자 종업원을 성폭행한 혐의를 받아 수갑을 찬 채 체포돼 큰 파문을 일으켰다.
그러나 피해자의 신뢰성에 의문이 일었고 당시 상황에 대한 증거도 분명하지 않다는 의혹이 제기되면서 검찰이 공소를 취하할 것이라는 관측이 나왔다.
검찰이 공소를 정식으로 취하하면 스트로스-칸 전 총재는 프랑스로 돌아갈 수 있다. 스트로크-칸은 체포된 뒤 구속 적부심을 통해 풀려났지만 보석 상태라 미국을 떠날 수 없었다.
프랑스 사회당은 스트로스-칸을 대통령 후보로 추대할 것을 검토 중이라고 밝혔다. (연합뉴스)
