There’s really only one loser in Strauss-Kahn affair

There was from the start something fishy about the Strauss-Kahn affair. The speed with which the New York police moved seemed just a bit suspicious, as if they had been primed in advance.

Usually, one thought, allegations such as that brought by the hotel maid, Nafissatou Diallo, are more thoroughly examined before an arrest is made, especially such a high-profile one.

Was it, moreover, necessary to clap handcuffs on the chief of the International Monetary Fund, who was also a prospective Socialist candidate for next year’s French presidential election? Wouldn’t it have been possible to remove him fairly unobtrusively from the plane in order to be questioned? However, we were assured this was the American way: humiliate the suspect and make him seem guilty, despite the legal requirement for the presumption of innocence.

Then there was the leaking of what was said to be suspicious behaviour on Strauss-Kahn’s part. We were told he had “fled” from the hotel within minutes of the encounter with the maid, and that, in his haste to leave “the scene of the crime”, he had left his mobile phone behind. (It later transpired that he had, as might be expected, more than one mobile, and that he had called the hotel to say he had forgotten this one – not exactly the behaviour of a man on the run.)

In fact, he had left, certainly in a hurry, to keep a lunch engagement with his daughter before catching the plane for a meeting of EU finance ministers.

The humiliation continued: the “perp walk”, the confinement in the tough Riker’s Island prison, the apparent presumption of guilt, the attempt by the New York district attorney to persuade the court at the committal proceedings to deny him bail.

Watching the TV pictures of that court appearance, and seeing Strauss-Kahn dishevelled and unshaven, one was more aware than ever of his Jewishness. There was a weary and almost resigned dignity about him. It was as if he was being thrust back into the ghetto, as if he had always known that no matter how high he had flown, he would one day would be brought crashing down. The attempt to deny him bail was rejected, but the conditions imposed were of extraordinary stringency.

Now the case against him has collapsed (though Miss Diallo and her lawyers are still bringing a civil suit). The prosecution found her testimony riddled with lies and have told her: “We are going to dismiss the case. You have told us so many lies. We can’t win”.

“If we don’t believe her beyond a reasonable doubt,” the prosecution says, “we can’t ask a jury to do so.”

Strauss-Kahn and his legal team have never denied that a sex act took place, but have insisted that it was consensual. Whatever the truth, he has been severely damaged. He has had to resign his position at the IMF, and it is all but certain that he will not be a candidate in the presidential election, though he may still have some sort of political career. Certainly his friends in the Socialist party think this possible.

However, he may also face a suit in the French courts from the journalist Tristane Banon, who claims that he tried to rape her in 2003. (She says she kept quiet at the time on the advice of her mother, a friend of Strauss-Kahn and his millionaire wife, Anne Sinclair.)

There is plenty of evidence of Strauss-Kahn’s predatory behaviour towards women. He was well-known as “le grand seducteur” and as the type of man whom mothers used to warn their daughters was “not safe in taxis”. There have been many politicians and men of power like him: Lloyd George, Mussolini, Jack Kennedy and Bill Clinton being well-known examples, none of whom might be regarded as safe in a taxi or their own office. Strauss-Kahn’s habitual conduct may be condemned as deplorable, reprehensible and disgusting – even if seen by others, in France and elsewhere, as natural. But clearly there is no credible evidence on which he can be found guilty of the crime with which he was charged.

Consequently, there are new questions to be asked and examined. Chief among them is this: was he set up? Did some enemy or political rival, either in France or the IMF, knowing as they all did of his voracious sexual appetite, see an opportunity to frame him? Was Miss Diallo paid to entice him – not much enticement would have been needed – and then to cry “rape”? And were the New York police apprised of the “crime” before it was committed? This last may be an extravagant suggestion, but the speed of his arrest means that it will surely be aired and investigated.

However things turn out, Strauss-Kahn is the loser – and perhaps he deserves to be. The French Socialist party may also be a loser because he was seen as its most credible prospective candidate. If the Left doesn’t win next year’s election, its supporters may think France a loser.

The first winners are his rivals in the party, notably François Hollande, now judged to be the Socialists’ front-runner. Nicolas Sarkozy may also be a winner, for Strauss-Kahn’s disgrace has removed his most dangerous opponent.

French women may also be winners, if the male assumptions of a “droit de seigneur” have been punctured and the French media abandon their practice of “omerta” with regard to the private life of men of power. One feminist group has a new slogan, “nous sommes toutes les bonnes “ – “we are all [hotel] maids”.

And the hotel maid herself, Miss Diallo? On the face of it, she is a loser, exposed as a liar, her credibility in shreds. Yet she will also be seen by many as a horribly wronged woman, and this may be enough to make her a celebrity, and therefore a winner.

Of one thing we may be sure. The story isn’t dead. The next stage is an investigation into the possibility that Strauss-Kahn was set up and is therefore a victim. A conspiracy theory? Yes, but one that is likely to run.