its quite possible the whole thing was a set up
consider some of the following from the NYRB article,
What Really Happened to Strauss-Kahn?
December 22, 2011, Edward Jay Epstein (reprinted and edited apologetically without consent)
According to the hotel’s electronic key records ...
a maid, had entered the presidential suite (room 2806) between 12:06 and 12:07 PM
Ordinarily, cleaning personnel do not enter a room to clean when a guest is still in it.
According to DSK’s account ... he emerged naked from the bathroom ... he encountered the maid in the corridor by the bathroom.
Phone records show that by 12:13 PM he was speaking to his daughter Camille on his BlackBerry. The call lasted for forty seconds.
What took place between DSK and the maid in those six to seven intervening minutes is a matter of dispute.
DNA evidence found outside the bathroom door showed her saliva mixed with his semen.
The New York prosecutor concluded that a “hurried sexual encounter” took place and DSK’s lawyers have admitted as much, while claiming that what happened was consensual. The maid has brought a civil suit claiming he used force.
At 12:28 PM the hotel security cameras show him departing
(meets daughter Camille at restaurant) restaurant camera shows that he arrived at 12:54.
2:15 PM, according to the restaurant’s surveillance cameras, DSK got in another taxi to go to the airport.
Almost immediately,
he discovered that his IMF BlackBerry was missing. It was the phone he had arranged to have examined for bugs in Paris and it was the phone that contained the earlier text message warning him about the interception of his messages. At 2:16 PM he called Camille, who had also just left the restaurant, on his spare BlackBerry and had her go back to the restaurant to search for it. Camera footage at the restaurant shows her crawling under the table.
At 2:28 PM she sent him a text message saying that she could not find it. So DSK continued on to the airport.
(The maid)After she had left DSK in the presidential suite around 12:13 PM—the time of his call to Camille—she remained on the VIP floor.
The hotel’s electronic key records indicate that
at 12:26 PM she entered 2820, another VIP suite on the same floor that she had already entered several times earlier that morning. Then, one to two minutes later, she went back to the now empty presidential suite.
A few minutes after that, she encountered another housekeeper, her supervisor, in the corridor.
... said that she had been assaulted by the guest in the presidential suite.
Shortly thereafter the hotel’s own security team was augmented by John Sheehan, a security expert who is identified on LinkedIn as “director of safety and security” at Accor, a part of the French-based Accor Group, which owns the Sofitel.
Sheehan, who was at home in Washingtonville, New York, that morning, received a call from the Sofitel at 1:03 PM. He then rushed to the hotel.
While en route, according to his cell phone records, he called a number with a 646 prefix in the United States.
But from these records neither the name nor the location of the person he called can be determined.
When I called the number a man with a heavy French accent answered and asked whom I wanted to speak with at Accor.3
The man I asked to talk to—and to whom I was not put through—was René-Georges Querry, Sheehan’s ultimate superior at Accor and a well-connected former chief of the French anti-gang brigades, who was now head of security for the Accor Group.
Before joining Accor Group in 2003, he had worked closely in the police with Ange Mancini, who is now coordinator for intelligence for President Sarkozy.
At 3:01 PM, as DSK was approaching the airport, he was still attempting to find his missing phone. He attempted to call it from his spare but received no answer.
What he did not know was that at 12:51, according to the records of the BlackBerry company, it had been somehow disabled. At 3:29 PM, evidently unaware of what was happening at the Sofitel, he called the hotel from the taxi, saying, according to the police transcript, “I am Dominique Strauss-Kahn, I was a guest. I left my phone behind.” He then said he was in room “2806.” He was asked to give a phone number, so that he could be called back, after 2806 was searched for his phone.
When he was called back thirteen minutes later, he spoke to a hotel employee who was in the presence of police detective John Mongiello.
The hotel employee falsely told him that his phone had been found and asked where it could be delivered. DSK told him that he was at JFK Airport and that “I have a problem because my flight leaves at 4:26 PM.”
He was reassured that someone could bring it to the airport in time. “OK, I am at the Air France Terminal, Gate 4, Flight 23,” DSK responded.
So the police rushed to the airport.
At 4:45 PM, police called DSK off the plane and took him into custody.(the maid)
When asked why she had not used her pass key to go into another room, she said they all had “Do Not Disturb” signs on the door.
After her grand jury testimony, prosecutors discovered that this was false when the hotel belatedly provided them with the electronic key records showing that
Diallo had entered room 2820 at 12:26 PM, after her encounter with DSK. The same record showed that she had also entered room 2820 prior to her encounter with DSK at a time when the occupant had not checked out and may have been in the room.
Why she concealed visiting 2820 was “inexplicable” to the prosecutors, who noted in their motion for dismissal that if she had mentioned her visits to 2820, it would have been declared part of the crime scene and searched by the police. But she did not do so.
Nor were DSK’s lawyers able to find an explanation.
When they attempted to learn the identity of the occupant of 2820, Sofitel refused to release it on grounds of privacy. Given Diallo’s conflicting accounts, all that we really know about what happened in the nearby room 2820 is that
Diallo went there both before and after her encounter with DSK and then omitted the latter visit from her sworn testimony to the grand jury. We still do not know if there was anyone in 2820 when she entered it again following the encounter with DSK or if, prior to the police arriving, anyone influenced her to omit mention of room 2820.
The Sofitel electronic key record, which the hotel did not turn over to the prosecutors until the next week, contained another unexplained anomaly.
Two individuals, not one, entered DSK’s suite between 12:05 and 12:06 PM while he was showering.
Each used a different key card entry. The key card used at 12:06 belonged to Diallo; the key card used at 12:05 belonged to Syed Haque, a room service employee who, according to his account, came to pick up the breakfast dishes. If he did so, he would have turned left and gone to the dining room.
But Haque has refused to be interviewed by DSK’s lawyers, so his precise movements have not been made public. Since the key cards do not register the time of exit, it cannot be determined from them if both parties were in the room at the same time or, for that matter, at the time of Diallo’s encounter with DSK.
DSK’s BlackBerry, with its messages, is still missing. Investigations by both the police and private investigators retained by DSK’s lawyers failed to find it.
While DSK believed he had left it in the Sofitel, the records obtained from BlackBerry show that the missing phone’s GPS circuitry was disabled at 12:51.
This stopped the phone from sending out signals identifying its location. Apart from the possibility of an accident, for a phone to be disabled in this way, according to a forensic expert, required technical knowledge about how the BlackBerry worked.
From electronic information that became available to investigators in November 2011, it appears the phone never left the Sofitel. If it was innocently lost, whoever found it never used it, raising the question of by whom and why it was disabled at 12:51.
In any case, its absence made it impossible for DSK to check—as he had planned to do—to see if it had been compromised.
Nor was it possible to verify from the phone itself the report he received on May 14 that his messages were being intercepted.
So we cannot confirm the warning to DSK that he was under surveillance on that disastrous day.
Sarko's a hard guy to like and has two ex-wives to prove it. Not many people seem to have gotten the knack, which isn't to say he doesn't have supporters, just that their support doesn't extend far beyond their wallets. Last week was pretty dismal chez Sarko and not one "friend" rallied to his side that I could see, while Hollande's campaign has turned into victory tour with people falling all over themselves to endorse him, including most of last week's also-rans, directly or implicitly. Here's one of very few long faces and it ain't Carla Bruni's:
