Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Judge: No immunity for Strauss-Kahn

Ex-IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn wants to dismiss a civil suit brought by a hotel maid, claiming he has diplomatic immunity.
Ex-IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn wants to dismiss a civil suit brought by a hotel maid, claiming he has diplomatic immunity.
  • Dominique Strass-Kahn was head of the International Money Fund
  • Criminal charges that he assaulted a New York hotel housekeeper were dropped
  • But the housekeeper filed a civil suit
  • His lawyers argue that he enjoyed diplomatic immunity

(CNN) -- Former International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn will learn Tuesday whether a judge will dismiss a civil suit brought against him by the New York hotel housekeeper who accused him of assaulting her last year.

Strauss-Kahn's lawyers asked a judge to dismiss the case in March, arguing Strauss-Kahn had diplomatic immunity.

At the time, Bronx state Supreme Court Justice Douglas McKeon said he would "expeditiously issue a decision" deciding whether the case could proceed.

The ruling will be posted on the court's website about 10 a.m. ET.

Strauss-Kahn headed the IMF, an international organization consisting of 187 member-states with headquarters in Washington. The IMF provides loans to countries that are suffering economic difficulties.

He resigned his position soon after his arrest by New York police in May 2011, when he was charged with criminally assaulting a housekeeper in a Manhattan hotel suite.

The housekeeper, Nafissatou Diallo, accused Strauss-Kahn of attempting to rape her when she walked into his suite. Police subsequently removed him from an Air France flight about to depart New York's Kennedy Airport and jailed him before his arraignment in criminal court.

The arrest of such a high-profile international political figure who was preparing a presidential run in his native France sparked worldwide media interest. But the criminal case against Strauss-Kahn was later dropped by New York prosecutors, because of credibility issues they cited in Diallo's account.

"At the end of the day, they did something very courageous by dismissing the case," one of his lawyer, Benjamin Brafman, told CNN's Piers Morgan on Monday night. "It took a lot of guts to do that. It was the right decision. That case was fed by a media frenzy unlike any I've seen."

In August, Diallo's lawyers served Strauss-Kahn with a civil suit seeking damages stemming from the alleged assault in the hotel. Lawyer Douglas Wigdor told the court during the March hearing that Strauss-Kahn "brutally sexually assaulted" Diallo, arguing that Strauss-Kahn does not enjoy blanket diplomatic immunity from civil action.

As head of the IMF, Strauss-Kahn did enjoy some immunity, but a key sticking point is whether it extended to situations beyond his official duties.

"Immunity is only provided for official actions," argued Wigdor. "Absolute immunity does not apply to all situations."

Strauss-Kahn's lawyers did not invoke his immunity from prosecution during the criminal case. Wigdor ridiculed the fact that they would invoke it in the civil case, but not the criminal case as "piecemeal immunity."

But Strauss-Kahn's lawyer Amit Mehta countered that his client was eager to assert his innocence in the criminal proceedings, and so he didn't invoke whatever immunity he enjoyed as IMF chief.

In the months following the hotel accusation last year, other allegations surfaced. Anne Mansouret, a Socialist member of the French parliament, said Strauss-Kahn had attacked her daughter. A complaint was filed, alleging a 2002 attack, though it could not be pursued because the statute of limitations had expired.

Currently, Strauss-Kahn faces another legal battle -- this time the case centers on an investigation into a high-profile prostitution network operating out of luxury hotels in the French city of Lille.

Strauss-Kahn has been formally warned by French authorities that he is under investigation for "aggravated pimping," and has been released on 100,000-euro bail. He has pushed back against the accusations, saying he did not know young women at parties he attended were being paid for sex.

CNN's Hussein Saddique contributed to this report.

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