Conversa ao telefone com traficante, depósitos bancários e mentira sobre motivo para imigração desqualificaram a acusação de atentado sexual. No entanto não há até o momento nenhuma explicação para o achado de DNA do acusado na roupa da camareira (essa prova tão fundamental para a acusação foi fabricada de propósito??)
Strauss-Kahn Accuser’s Call Alarmed Prosecutors
By JIM DWYER and MICHAEL WILSON
Published: July 1, 2011
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.
Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times
The Sofitel New York, where the hotel housekeeper said she was assaulted.
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.
The story of the woman’s six-week journey from seemingly credible victim, in the eyes of prosecutors, to a deeply unreliable witness, is drawn from interviews with law enforcement officials, statements from the woman’s lawyer and a letter from prosecutors to Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s defense team released in court on Friday. Some of the events were confirmed by both law enforcement officials and the women’s lawyer; others rely solely on law enforcement officials. In the end, it was the prosecutors’ assessment of the housekeeper’s credibility that led them to downgrade their confidence in the case and agree on Friday that Mr. Strauss-Kahn could be freed from house arrest.
In the beginning, her relationship with prosecutors was strong. Her account seemed solid. Over time, the well-placed official said, they discovered that she was capable of telling multiple, inconsistent versions of what appeared to be important episodes in her life. After the encounter with Mr. Strauss-Kahn, she asked her supervisor at Sofitel, “Can any guest at the hotel do anything they want with us?” her lawyer, Kenneth P. Thompson, said during a sidewalk press conference on Friday defending her.
The supervisor called security, and officers, finding semen on the floor and wall, called the police, setting off the quick chain of events that led to police officers escorting Mr. Strauss-Kahn off an Air France plane set to depart Kennedy International Airport.
Suspicions of the woman’s associations arose relatively quickly: within a week of Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s arrest, the authorities learned of a recorded conversation between the subject of a drug investigation and another man, who said his companion was the woman involved in the Strauss-Kahn matter, according to another law enforcement official.
Prosecutors and investigators interviewed the woman at length.Her immigration history was a focus. At first, she told them what she told immigration officials seven years ago in her accounts of how she fled Guinea and her application for asylum on Dec. 30, 2004. She described soldiers destroying the home where she lived with her husband, and said they were both beaten because of their opposition to the regime. She said her husband died in jail
Prosecutors and investigators interviewed the woman at length.Her immigration history was a focus. At first, she told them what she told immigration officials seven years ago in her accounts of how she fled Guinea and her application for asylum on Dec. 30, 2004. She described soldiers destroying the home where she lived with her husband, and said they were both beaten because of their opposition to the regime. She said her husband died in jail
From Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s first court appearance on May 16, Mr. Vance’s office expressed extreme confidence in its case. At that hearing, an assistant district attorney said, “The victim provided very powerful details consistent with violent sexual assault committed by the defendant.”
Michael Kirby Smith for The New York Times
DISTRICT ATTORNEY Cyrus R. Vance Jr.: “Our office's commitment is to the truth and the facts.” More Photos »
Multimedia
The case has the potential to affect Mr. Vance’s political fortunes. Outside the courthouse on Friday, he stressed that his office did what it was required to do.
“We believe we have done nothing but to support her,” Mr. Vance said. “Our duty is to do what is right in every case. Our office’s commitment is to the truth and the facts.”
Mr. Strauss-Kahn will now be able to move about the country freely. (He had dinner Friday night at Scalinatella, an upscale restaurant on the Upper East Side.) Although prosecutors will retain his passport, most of his restrictive bail conditions have been lifted. Under those rules, he was required to stay in a Lower Manhattan town house under armed guard and to wear an ankle monitor. He could leave only for certain reasons and had to notify prosecutors when he did.
Benjamin Brafman, a lawyer who has represented Mr. Strauss-Kahn along with William W. Taylor III, said: “I want to commend Cy Vance for doing what is appropriate, for doing what I think took some great courage and personal integrity, to stand up and say this case is not what we thought it was. We are absolutely convinced that while today is a first giant step in the right direction, the next step will be to make a complete dismissal of the charges.”
The letter from the prosecutors did not include everything their investigators had learned about the woman. According to two law enforcement officials familiar with the prosecutors’ inquiry, the woman had a phone conversation with an incarcerated man within a day of her encounter with Mr. Strauss-Kahn in which she discussed the possible benefits of pursuing the charges against him. The conversation was recorded.
That man, the investigators learned, had been arrested on charges of possessing 400 pounds of marijuana. He is among a number of individuals who made multiple cash deposits, totaling about $100,000, into the woman’s bank account over the last two years. The deposits were made in Arizona, Georgia, New York and Pennsylvania.
The investigators also learned that the woman was paying hundreds of dollars every month in phone charges to five companies. She had insisted she had only one phone and said she knew nothing about the deposits except that they were made by a man she described as her fiancé and his friends.
After his hearing, Mr. Strauss-Kahn emerged from court, smiling at the assembled crowds, the expression brightening with each step. Later, at the town house on Franklin Street where he had been under confinement, a gift arrived of over a dozen red, white and blue balloons, accompanied by an inflatable Statue of Liberty.
A note was attached, according to Sean Hershkowitz, of Balloon Saloon in TriBeCa, that said, “Enjoy your freedom on Independence Day.” He added that he had been by a few weeks earlier with a different delivery: an inflatable shark with a chew toy. That gift, Mr. Hershkowitz said, was refused at the door.
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