It is July 4, Independence Day, and the US is understandably proud not only of the independence it won from Britain 235 years ago, but also the independence its judiciary enjoys from state interference. But do latest, quite sensational developments in the DSK affair offer compelling proof that it is a system that works, or strengthen prevailing doubts on the other side of the Atlantic? ...
The suggestion of complot - dirty tricks of one kind or another - has been on people's lips in France since day one of the saga of Dominique Strauss-Kahn.
Now that the prosecution case seems close to disintegration, the suspicion is growing. Why, some are asking today, did Sofitel alert the Paris HQ of its parent group Accor, and then Accor tip off the Elysée?
My own response would be: "Why wouldn't they?"
If I had been duty manager at the Sofitel off Times Square that Saturday in May, I'd have thought it a good idea to tell head office what was happening. It was hardly a simple matter of ordering too much linen or worrying about a porter caught dipping his hand into an everyday guest's luggage.
And if I'd received the call in Paris, the identity of the accused would have been enough to prompt me to consider letting the authorities know, too, rather than be accused later of having sat on news of exceptional events concerning a man tipped to the the next president of France.
As to whether DSK was actually the victim of a set-up, I simply do not know the answer. And nor do most people. In truth, only the former IMF chief and the woman he is accused of trying to rape will ever know precisely what went on in that hotel suite.
I have all along resisted any notion of official or semi-official French involvement in the encounter that led to Strauss-Kahn being hauled off his Paris-bound flight at the last minute.
No, there is not much I would put beyond people of power and influence. But I cannot bring myself to believe anyone acting for or on behalf of a political enemy, by implication a certain president of a certain republic (or someone else wanting his job), would be so stupid as to think such a scheme would work.
For the same reason, I exclude the thought that some maverick intelligence officer/s took it upon himself/themselves to set up a bogus sex assault, thinking these actions of service to France.
It is difficult to think that anything DSK did as IMF managing director would have caused a rogue nation to have plotted his downfall in such a manner.
Which leaves decent, ordinary crime, a get-rich-quick plan devised and executed by individuals sensing money to be made from the sexual appetite of a noted public figure. There is plenty to make even that scenario appear improbable, too: do alleged immigrant drug dealers, or their partners toiling in lowly employment, really know enough about the life and ways of a man heading the IMF to be capable of dreaming up such a plot?
In my very first report on the arrest of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, written the day after he was detained on suspicion of sexually assaulting a hotel chambermaid, I wrote the following words:
... short of complete exoneration, it is now hard to see how Mr Strauss-Kahn can either maintain his IMF role or proceed, as had been predicted, to declare himself a French presidential candidate.
Are we on the point of that exoneration coming to pass, long after the IMF role disappeared and whatever the real prospects of the French political timetable being altered to accommodate a comeback?
At this stage, DSK is probably more concerned with clearing his name.
It may turn out that any criminal enterprise to turn the incident into a moneyspinner was hatched only after the event. And it is still entirely possible that mundane explanations exist for just about all that has occurred. It is equally possible that we will never know the full, unembroidered truth.
In America, there is some recognition of the unsavoury element that fuelled rabid press coverage of the arrest. A Washington media correspondent admitted in an interview shown in France last night that on top of the the rich vs poor factor, beyond the appeal of a story of sex and sleaze involving a world figure, this one had that extra ingredient: the chance of a bit of Frog-bashing.
Every time I read in an American newspaper or magazine that this or that development has led to a fresh outburst of anti-US sentiment in France, as if such base thoughts were covered by Gallic monopoly, I remember how well the boot fits the other foot.
But in a spirit of fairness, let it be said that this works both ways.
The French press is currently looking with renewed contempt at the way things work in the US. No one has forgotten the squalid humiliation of DSK with the infamous Perp Walk, the unedifying parade in handcuffs for the benefit of cameras, or the straightforward abuse of any notion of presumption of innocence.
But that same, currently sanctimonious French media have disgraced themselves in their own treatment of the women who is still, as I write, the victime presumée. A supposed French attempted rape victim would not have been routinely identified, as DSK's accuser has from very early in this affair. The woman's name now dances off the keyboards or lips of every French reporter or presenter as if the principle of anonymity for alleged victims of sex crime were no more than a discretionary journalistic favour.
If and when this woman is charged with falsely accusing DSK of attacking her, then she would lose that protection of her privacy in any case, and I have no quarrels with that. But for now, without re-opening all sorts of other festering wounds the affair has inflicted on the French media, I could well do without holier-than-thou lectures.
And whatever criticism may justly be levelled at the way the US police and prosecuting authorities have handled the case from the outset, when spurious claims of a hasty flight from justice were used to block DSK's hopes of bail, it is also true that in the end, it is the same American system that has uncovered serious flaws in the case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn.
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