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发帖数: 4825 | 1 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870408390457633353
* MAY 19, 2011, 4:12 P.M. ET
NEW YORK-Former International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn was
granted a $1 million bail and sent to home detention, allowing for his
release from jail while he tries to fight charges sexually assaulted a maid
at a New York hotel.
A grand jury on Thursday indicted Mr. Strauss Kahn shortly before a judge
heard his bid to be released from Rikers Island.
State Supreme Court Judge Michael Obus said that Mr. Strauss-Kahn can be
released on $1 million cash bail and placed under 24-hour home detention at
a Manhattan apartment with electronic monitoring rented by his wife,
conditions that had been proposed by his lawyers.
Mr. Strauss-Kahn, who sat in the hearing in a light-colored suit and a blue
dress shirt, could be released as soon as he posts the bail.
A prosecutor for the Manhattan district attorney's office, John McConnell,
said at the outset of the hearing that a grand jury had handed up an
indictment against Mr. Strauss-Kahn. Mr. McConnell said prosecutors opposed
his release because he is an "existential" flight risk.
The indictment charges Mr. Strauss-Kahn with a criminal sexual act in the
first degree, attempted rape, sexual abuse in the first and third degrees,
unlawful imprisonment in the second degree and forcible touching. Several of
the charges are high-level felonies. The most serious carries up to 25
years in prison.
A different judge rejected a bail request on Monday, largely on grounds that
Mr. Strauss-Kahn posed a flight risk. Mr. Strauss-Kahn resigned Wednesday
as the IMF's managing director. In a resignation letter released by the IMF
board, he denied "with the greatest possible firmness all of the allegations
that have been made against me."
He is charged in connection with the alleged attack on Saturday of a
housekeeper in his 28th floor suite at the Sofitel hotel in Manhattan.
Afterwards, police removed Mr. Strauss-Kahn from a plane that was about to
leave the country enroute to Paris.
An attorney for Mr. Strauss-Kahn, Benjamin Brafman, suggested at an earlier
court appearance that he will argue the sex was consensual. Mr. Brafman didn
't appear at Thursday's hearing because he was out of town on a previously
scheduled trip.
The alleged victim has been interviewed by police and prosecutors several
times, her lawyer has said.
Investigators on Monday evening took the woman back to hotel suite, where
she showed them two places in the multiroom suite where she recalled
spitting after what prosecutors say was Mr. Strauss-Kahn's effort to force
her into oral sex, according to a law-enforcement official familiar with the
situation. |
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