US court lifts Strauss-Kahn house arrest, returns bail

Former IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn walked out of a US criminal court on Friday having had his house arrest conditions lifted and bail returned, after US prosecutors found serious lapses in his alleged rape victim''s credibility. Strauss-Kahn, 62, walked out the New York State Supreme Court in Lower Manhattan with a shy smile on his face, with one hand over his wife''s shoulder.
The couple entered a sedan and was immediately whisked away by security guards. News reports said Judge Michael Obus agreed to requests by US prosecutors to exempt the French politician from bail conditions, which in the past month kept him secluded in a luxury townhouse, with an electronic ankle bracelet that would trace all his movements.
The judge ordered Strauss-Kahn to return to court on July 18 because the case has not been dismissed. His French passport remains confiscated. He is charged with sexual assault and attempted rape against the New York hotel chambermaid. Strauss-Kahn''s lawyers may now chose to plea bargain the charges against him or ask for dismissal of the case after prosecutors doubted the credility of his victim, a Sofitel Hotel maid and immigrant from Guinea. Before Strauss-Kahn appeared in court, US prosecutors had agreed to releasing him on his own recognizance, Bloomberg News said.
Prosecutors have had growing doubts about the reliability of their victim witness, who claimed she was sexually assaulted by Strauss-Kahn in the Sofitel suite on May 14. The developments provide a dramatic turn in the case that has riveted France after it forced the world''s most influential banker to resign from the IMF and undermined his ambitions for the French presidency. Strauss-Kahn posted 1 million dollars in cash and 5 million dollars in bonds as bail for his release from a Rikers Island cell following his first arraignment in early June.
News of growing cracks in the credibility of the alleged victim electrified France''s Socialist Party. He had been tipped to represent the French Socialist Party in next year''s presidential election. All polls conducted before his arrest had showed him easily defeating incumbent President Nicolas Sarkozy if he ran.
Former Socialist party leader Francois Hollande, who has since emerged as the front-runner for president, said he hoped that "all the charges that have weighed so painfully, so cruelly on him (Strauss-Kahn)" would be dropped on Friday. "It would be a deliverance for him, his family and his loved ones," Hollande said.
Current party leader Martine Aubry, who is also seeking the Socialist nomination for president, reacted more cautiously, saying she hoped the US justice would "establish all the truth" at Friday''s hearing. Nominations to the party primaries in October opened on Tuesday. Candidates have until July 13 to put their names forward. Strauss-Kahn had been assumed to be out of the race following his indictment over the encounter in his suite at the Sofitel hotel on May 14.
One senior party member, Michele Sabban, called for the primary process to be suspended until Strauss-Kahn had had a chance to give his side of the story. Citing two unnamed, well-placed law enforcement officials the Times reported that prosecution investigators have discovered inconsistencies in what Strauss-Kahn''s accuser told them about herself. They had also turned up connections between her and drug dealers and unexplained money transfers in her bank account, the report said.