"Leave me alone," says Dominique Strauss-Kahn

Ah. We've all missed him, haven't we?

Who?

Dominique Strauss-Kahn of course.

Since his alleged "philandering" (to put in mildly) in that infamous Sofitel suite in New York back in May 2011, the former head of the International Monetary Fund has only given one interview.

That was with the clearly uncomfortable TF1 news anchor Claire Chazal in September last year when DSK gave a table-thumping performance while brandishing a document "proving" his innocence but also having the temerity to admit he had made a "moral error" - whatever that was supposed to mean.



Since then of course there have been further accusations, such as those of writer and journalist Tristane Banon and investigations into his involvement in hotel sex parties with prostitutes in the northern city of Lille.

His long-suffering and very deep-pocketed wife Anne Sinclair has flown the coop, and the man to whom France must be eternally grateful for the arrival of the gormlessly presidential normal one in office (François Hollande, in case you were wondering), has kept as low a profile as possible given the circumstances.

But now the man the French "affectionately" (really?) refer to as DSK is back - sort of - with an exclusive and all-revealing five-page interview in the weekly news magazine Le Point.

Actually it's not - revealing that is.

Much of what DSK actually tells the magazine has been heard or said before with the exception perhaps that, in almost Greta Garbo-style, DSK launches a plea for the media to leave him alone.

Reach for your handkerchieves everyone as you read the following (paraphrased) extract.

"I no longer play any sort of official public role. I'm not a candidate for anything and I have never been convicted either in this country or any other," he tells Le Point.

"Therefore there's really no reason why the media should be so interested in me and to such an extent it has become almost like a manhunt," he continues, disingenuously to say the least.

"I can no longer stand the fact that the media seems to have given itself the 'right' to violate my privacy in the way it has, just because there have been false allegations made against me and judicial investigations launched.

"I just want to be left alone!"

And yadda yadda yadda.

DSK is probably not the only one - that wishes he would be left alone, that is.

The less coverage, the better.

But just in case you can't get enough and want a great pre-bedtime read with your Horlicks, rush out now to the newsagents to secure your copy of this week's Le Point.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn and that "interview"

So, the former head of the International Monetary Fund Dominique Strauss-Kahn (DSK) has "spoken" to the French in a mind-numbingly tedious and staged interview on prime time news here.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn (screenshot from TF1 interview)

The subject of course, as if you needed telling, was what really happened in room 2806 of the Sofitel in New York on May 15.

Except what viewers were treated to was anything but an insight.

Instead it was a carefully orchestrated affair with DSK claiming he had been proven innocent, admitting to a "moral failing" (so that's the new, politically correct term for any indecent behaviour) and almost terrifying poor Claire Chazal, the journalist faced with the onerous task of not asking anything that might embarrass.

Humility, sincerity and honesty were hardly at the top of DSK's agenda as he twisted the facts to suit his proclaimed "innocence".

He brandished the report of the New York County District Attorney Cyrus Vance junior, claiming that it not only proved his innocence but also showed that Nafissatou Diallo had lied throughout, an inaccuracy in interpretation TF1 was quick to point out in the following night's prime time news, presented by Laurance Ferrari, a journalist who might just have given DSK more of a grilling had she been allowed the "honour" of interviewing him.

http://videos.tf1.fr/jt-20h/que-contient-au-juste-le-rapport-du-procureur-brandi-par-dsk-6716434.html

But Ferrari wasn't the one who had been chosen. Rather it was Chazal, a women with decades of experience, an anchor of TF1's lunchtime and evening news at the weekend and reportedly a friend of DSK's wife Anne Sinclair (herself a former television journalist).

The 54-year-old was clearly frustrated at the limits that had so obviously been given to her and the whole "interview" proved to be nothing more than a charade.

Diallo had lied...she was also, just like the French writer and journalist Tristane Banon, who accused DSK of trying to assault her in 2003, a troubled woman... the weekly news magazine L'Express was nothing but a tabloid....the US justice system had frightened and humiliated him even before he had been able to proclaim his innocence...and on and on it went.

Great television though - well in terms of ratings - as it pulled in around 13 million viewers.

If you want to watch the whole "performance" in its original French, then sit back, listen and "Watch with Mother" to all 23 minutes and 47 seconds worth.


Bon courage.


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L'interview de DSK au 20h : l'intégrale

Dominique Strauss-Kahn handcuffed - the image that shocked the French

The arrest and detention of the head of the International Monetary Fund, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, or DSK as he's more commonly known in France, on charges of alleged sexual assault have made the headlines around the world over the past few days.

But perhaps the one image that those in France have found most difficult to accept is that of the "man who would be president" being handcuffed.

The image that shocked many French (screenshot from BFM TV)

In France, what happened - or didn't happen - on Sunday in New York has of course been major news; DSK was the front-runner in the Socialist party's primary to choose its candidate for next year's presidential election.

Even though he hadn't officially declared his intention to run, everyone knew he would when he decided the time was right.

Since Sunday the Socialist party has been thrown into headless chicken mode wondering how to cope with the accusations.

Its leader, Martine Aubry, had reportedly agreed not to stand in the primary, leaving the way clear for DSK.

Now though she is having to rethink her position, keep the party focused on it policies and manage the upcoming presidential campaign while all the time insisting that everyone in the party is profoundly shocked by the allegations.

The governing centre-right Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (Union for a Popular Movement, UMP) has on the whole been pretty reticent at drawing any conclusions or pointing the finger, declaring that the "presumption of innocence" must take precedence.

And even though the French president has called for "dignity" and requested government ministers from commenting publicly, there have been a few dissenting voices within his party.

UMP, parliamentarian Bernard Debré didn't mince his words when questioned by Europe 1 radio shortly after news broke of DSK's arrest.

"It's humiliating for France to have a man like that who wallows in sex and has done for some time as everyone knows," he said.

"Of course there's the presumption of innocence, but he is a disreputable man."

Not surprisingly Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right Front National took up the theme that many surrounding DSK knew of his behaviour and reputation towards women.

"The truth is that both politicians and journalists have been talking for the past couple of months about Strauss-Kahn's almost 'pathological' relations over the years with women," she told RTL radio.

"He has been definitively discredited as a potential presidential candidate."

French politicians and French society simply hasn't known how to handle what has been reported and the media hasn't made life easier.

It's borrowing courtroom images from the United States - something that simply wouldn't happen in the French judicial system - and happily - if that's the appropriate word - running them in endless loops on the country's many all-news channels.

Legal experts, political colleagues and opponents, friends, associates, pyscho-analysts - you name it - they've all be dragged in front of the cameras and asked for their opinions.

But perhaps the most shocking thing - and there are more than enough elements in the whole affair to shock - to many in France has been the sight of DSK appearing in handcuffs.

Remember this is a man who until the weekend looked as though he could well be the next French president.

This time next year he could have been in office and forming his first government.

Seeing pictures and clips of him in handcuffs seems to have hurt profoundly many French already embarrassed by the unsavoury way in which the equally sordid affair has been reported.

What's more there's actually a law in France - the Guigou law from 2000 - to protect an individual's "presumption of innocence by forbidding the dissemination of any image of a person in handcuffs - before he or she has been found guilty.

Alleged serial rapist freed because of error in French justice

While miscarriages of justice have been making the headlines here recently in France (see the stories on Loïc Sécher and Marc Machin), the latest case of the country's legal system "getting it wrong" involves freeing a man awaiting trial on two counts of rape.

Last week, Jorge Montes, was freed from custody because of a simple administrative mistake, and the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, has stepped in to speed up the process by which the original error can be rectified and Montes taken back into detention.

At the moment though, the 48-year-old, with a history of violence towards women and whom psychiatric experts, police and prosecutors all consider a danger to society, is "free" and the only obligation he has, is to report regularly to a police station in the Paris region.

The latest mess the French judicial system finds itself in occurred because of a simple (even the courts have admitted "stupid") slip of the pen.

On October 17 the clerk of a court in Paris signed a document that sought to reject a request to set Montes free, but rather than validating ("confirmer") that request, he invalidated ("infirmer") it - thus in effect allowing Montes to walk free until his case came up for trial.

To compound the mistake, the same document was countersigned by a judge who didn't pick up on the initial error, and last week to everyone's shock and even the surprise of Montes himself, he was allowed out of custody.

"It's a real scandal and a grave mistake," said Franck Berton, a lawyer for one of the alleged victims.

"I'm used to the judicial system sometimes not working properly, but this case is exceptional.

"It's an embarrassment. You cannot have two pages describing that this man is a dangerous criminal and then just one word which allows his liberty."

And that was very much the point of view of the French president who, although on a visit to China, issued a statement calling for the French justice system to rectify its mistake as soon as possible.

"I don't have the intention of allowing a serial rapist to remain free simply because there has been an administrative error," Sarkozy said.

With both Sarkozy and the justice minister, Rachida Dati, putting pressure on the system to correct its initial mistake, a hearing has been set for Friday October 31 for the original request to be authorised.

Montes is a man with a history of violence towards women. Both his former wives describe him as manipulative and violent and psychiatric evaluations categorise the 48-year-old as "narcissistic, a liar and a megalomaniac."

In May 2007 he was sentenced to two years imprisonment with one year suspended for violence and aggression to a former partner. He was freed in June this year and then taken into custody shortly afterwards for having violated the conditions of his parole.

The alleged rapes for which he is now awaiting trial predate that incarceration. One woman accuses him of holding her captive for 12 days in April 2006 and raping her repeatedly, and a second says he raped her in June of the same year

According to police reports, both women had been terrified and humiliated to such an extent that they had been afraid to press charges.

In perhaps what many would consider to be more than a surrealistic appearance in front of television cameras last week when he was allowed out of detention, even Montes seemed surprised.

"I feel astonished," he said. "It's incredible and unexpected."

His lawyer though, considers Montes' release to be totally acceptable and his client has every legal right to be walking free at the moment.

"It's official and has been signed by all the relevant people," Patrick Maisonneuve told French television. "About that there can be no discussion."

Although Montes is at liberty for the moment, he is required to report his whereabouts to police and has had his passport confiscated. On Friday, a Paris court will review the order allowing his release.

A miscarriage of justice?

Sometimes a country's legal system doesn't get it right. And that might well be the situation if a case currently making the headlines here in France is to be believed.

Has an innocent man been sitting in a French prison for the past six years for a crime that never happened?

A story covered in Monday evening's prime time news on TF1 and in several of the national daily newspapers, highlighted the case of 47-year-old Loïc Sécher, who has been behind bars perhaps for exactly that reason.

Wind back to 2000, when in November of that year police in the village of La Chapelle-Saint-Sauveur in Loire-Atlantique in western France, arrested Sécher, a farm labourer, and took him in for questioning following allegations made by a 13-year-old girl that he had sexually molested and raped her on three separate occasions.

She was the daughter of friends.

He proclaimed his innocence, but was later charged, and in December 2003 a court found him guilty and sentenced him to 16 years in prison.

An appeal a year later upheld that ruling and although Sécher has always maintained his innocence his cause seemed a lost one until April this year.

That was when the girl, now 22 years old, sent France's Chief Prosecutor a letter in which she said Sécher was "innocent and she could no longer live with the knowledge that he was in prison."

Sécher's defence team put in a request to France's court of cassation (the main court of "last resort" in France) that the case be re-examined, their client released and the original ruling overturned.

Yvon Chotard, one Sécher's lawyers, said that it had taken a lot of courage for the woman to retract her original claims and that at the time the allegations were made there had been no real investigation into the background of a girl who even her own lawyers admitted was "psychologically fragile."

"Eight years ago she had been the victim of school bullying by a trio of boys older than her," he is quoted as saying in Le Figaro.

In addition, at the time of his trial there had reportedly been no DNA evidence to prove that Sécher had assaulted the girl, and indeed a medical examination was unable to prove that a rape had taken place.

On Monday the court of cassation met behind closed doors to consider Sécher's case, but it did not reach the decision Chotard or his client had been hoping for. Instead it delayed making a final ruling until mid October.

"He (Sécher) is a victim of a miscarriage of justice," said Chotard after the hearing. "Our hope now is that the French justice system will release someone who has been claimed innocent by the victim."

For the moment though Sécher remains behind bars.

Even if the court decides to release him next month the process of overturning and in effect annulling the original decision could take a lot longer and would require another appeal.