new york | Former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn awoke May 17 in a notorious jail — Rikers Island — on an attempted rape charge as the outside world swirled with questions about the truth of the accusations and pressure mounted on him to step down.
The Jewish world was swirling a bit, too, especially in France, where Strauss-Kahn had been outspoken about his Jewish identity in a country where politicians typically are mum about their religion.
The May 14 arrest of Strauss-Kahn significantly changed the political playing field in France, as some recent polls had shown the 62-year-old now former head of the International Monetary Fund to be the most popular among those considered to be possible presidential contenders.
Strauss-Kahn — popularly known in France by his initials, DSK — has expressed feelings of attachment to Israel in the past, all the while maintaining a measured distance from actively participating in Jewish institutions, according to Jewish leaders in France.
“We lost a friend,” said Rabbi Michel Serfaty, president of the Jewish-Muslim Friendship of France. “It’s true that the Jewish community has a friend in [President Nicolas] Sarkozy,” as well as among other Socialist Party leaders, “but with DSK there was no doubt he was a member of the community, interested in Israel, that we have lost.”
Strauss-Kahn is the son of Gilbert Strauss-Kahn, a legal and tax adviser and member of the Grand Orient de France, and Russian-Tunisian journalist Jacqueline Fellus. His family is of mixed Sephardic and Ashkenazic origin, according to Wikipedia. He is married to French journalist Anne Sinclair, born Anne-Élise Schwartz, whose father was one of France’s major art dealers.
Strauss-Kahn pleaded not guilty to felony counts including sexual assault and attempted rape. On Thursday, May 19, over the objections of prosecutors, a judge agreed to free him from jail on $1 million bail on the condition he be confined to a New York apartment under armed guard while he awaits trial. He wore an expression of relief after Supreme Court Justice Michael J. Obus announced his decision in a packed courtroom. Later, Strauss-Kahn blew a kiss toward his wife. The ruling didn’t immediately free Strauss-Kahn from jail, as authorities needed time to review the security arrangements involved in his house arrest, which lawyers said would be at an apartment rented by his wife.
The lawyer who represented Strauss-Kahn at the hearing, William Taylor, said,”He’s going back to Rikers [Thursday] and we expect him to be released [Friday],” he said.
Strauss-Kahn will not only have to post the full $1 million but will also have to take out a $5 million insurance bond. A trial date was not immediately set. He spent nearly a week behind bars – most of that at Rikers, after a judge denied him bail on Monday, May 16. At that hearing, prosecutors warned that Strauss-Kahn might flee to France and escape justice in the U.S. like film director Roman Polanski.
He could not claim diplomatic immunity because he was in New York on personal business — a one-night trip to have lunch with his daughter, who is studying in New York, according to the French newspaper Le Monde — and was paying his own way, the IMF said. He could seek that protection only if he were conducting official business, according to IMF spokesman William Murray.
The bail decision came less than a day after Strauss-Kahn resigned as managing director of the IMF, the powerful organization that makes emergency loans to countries in financial crisis.
In his resignation letter, he denied the allegations against him but said he would quit in order to “protect this institution which I have served with honor and devotion” and to “devote all my strength, all my time and all my energy to proving my innocence.”
The charges were filed following accusations by a 32-year-old chambermaid at a Sofitel hotel in Manhattan. The chambermaid said that when she entered to clean Strauss-Kahn’s penthouse on the afternoon of May 14, he came out of the bathroom naked, pushed her onto the bed, assaulted her and forced her to perform oral sex, according to Paul Browne, deputy New York City police commissioner.
Defense lawyers were insisting there was no force involved and predicted Strauss-Kahn would be vindicated.
The accusations unearthed a troubling history for the man sometimes dubbed “the Great Seducer” in France. He might face an additional sexual assault investigation in France, where journalist Tristane Banon is expected to press charges against him for an incident she claims took place in 2002, according to her lawyer.
While some are concerned that the incident could unleash anti-Semitic sentiment in France, Marc Knobel, a researcher at the French Jewish umbrella group CRIF, said he had not found any significant reference to Strauss-Kahn’s religion in connection with his arrest.
On the contrary, “everybody knew he was Jewish, and that didn’t prevent him from being the most popular candidate in France,” said Richard Prasquier, the president of CRIF. “And that says something about France. Today we find it completely normal that a Jew can become president.”
Strauss-Kahn, however, speculated in a recent interview with the left-wing daily Liberation that he might face three particular difficulties if he were to run for president: “Money, women and the fact I am Jewish,” he was quoted as saying.
Earlier this year a member of Sarkozy’s UMP party was accused of alluding to Strauss-Kahn’s Jewish roots and causing a political row when he said on French radio that the IMF leader “doesn’t embody the image of France, the image of rural France that we like, and to which I’m attached.”
Among the large Jewish community in Sarcelles, a suburb north of Paris where Strauss-Kahn was a former mayor, the emotion following his arrest was palpable.
“It is very painful for us,” said Marc Djebali, vice president of the Sarcelles Jewish community. “I know him well. I’ve even seen him seduce a woman, but it was always with gentleness. He is someone who is very warm, and we never felt any problems of violence from him.”
The new head of France’s far-right National Front Party, Marine Le Pen, is among those who are likely to profit from Strauss-Kahn’s arrest, political analysts say. The prospect alarms many French Jews, who often consider the National Front to be anti-Semitic, though Le Pen has tried to project a new image for the party, which was founded by her father.
Jean Viard, senior analyst at the Paris political research center Cevipof, said that if Strauss-Kahn is convicted, it will both help Sarkozy in the 2012 election and “it increases the chances Marine Le Pen will make it to the second round of presidential elections.”
Financial and world leaders have spent the week speculating on who would succeed Strauss-Kahn at the IMF.
A final choice would largely hinge on whether the U.S. and the European Union continue to split the jobs of the two Washington-based sister organizations — the IMF and the World Bank. Since World War II, a European has headed the IMF, while the U.S. has grabbed the top job at the World Bank.
At Rikers, located on an island in the East River between the Bronx and Queens, Strauss-Kahn was given a single-bed cell and was eating all meals alone, unlike most prisoners who share 50-bed barracks.
Jennifer Peltz of the Associated Press and Devorah Lauter of JTA in Paris contributed to this report.