First Lady speaks out over Strauss-Kahn case

Ms Bruni said she was “confused” at how the attempted rape charges against the former IMF unravelled.

And she called support for Mr Strauss-Kahn – now back living at his luxury Paris apartment – as “machismo”.

The First Lady made her remarks to France’s TF1 television news yesterday, just hours after Mr Strauss-Kahn and wife Anne Sinclair landed at Charles de Gaulle airport on a flight from New York.

The 62-year-old was freed last week from charges of trying to rape and sexually assault New York hotel chambermaid Nafissatou Diallo on 14 May.

Mr Strauss-Kahn admitted having sex with her, but his lawyers successfully argued it has been a consensual and that his alleged victim had lied to police and was “unreliable”. But Ms Bruni, 44,: said: “I don’t understand how this whole business came to an end.

“I am a bit confused, and I simply detested all the machismo reaction that followed. When women are belittled and attacked, I tend to take their side and feel solidarity with them.”

Mr Strauss-Kahn has come home to mixed reactions from politicians and a poll saying the majority of French people believe he should stay out of politics.

French socialist party leader Martine Aubry last week issued a damning indictment of him, saying: “I think the same as most women about his attitude to women.”

And she said the 63-year-old economist “had some explaining to do” to his socialist party colleagues once back in Paris.