Asia-Pacific

IMF chief under suicide watch at NYC jail

(Agencies)
Updated: 2011-05-18 07:08

NEW YORK – IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn was placed under a suicide watch in jail, while pressure mounted on him to resign Tuesday and the hotel maid who accused him of attempted rape said through her lawyer that she had no idea who he was when she reported him to the police.

IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn listens as he stands before judge Melissa Jackson during his arraignment in Manhattan Criminal Court in New York, May 16, 2011. [Photo/Agencies]

Law enforcement officials emphasized that Strauss-Kahn had not tried to harm himself but that guards were keeping a close watch on him just in case.

Meanwhile, details began to emerge about his accuser, a 32-year-old immigrant from the West African nation of Guinea with a 15-year-old daughter.

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"There is no way in which there is any aspect of this event which could be construed consensual in any manner. This is nothing other than a physical, sexual assault by this man on this young woman," her attorney, Jeffrey Shapiro, told The Associated Press. He added: "She did not know who this man was until a day or two after this took place."

Strauss-Kahn, the 62-year-old managing director of the International Monetary Fund, was arrested Saturday and is being held without bail at the city's Rikers Island jail, kept apart from his fellow prisoners in a unit that normally houses inmates with contagious diseases.

Police and prosecutors said he ambushed a housekeeper who had come to clean his $3,000-per-night at a New York hotel. Lawyers for the influential banker have challenged that account, saying the evidence doesn't support accusations of forcible sex.

They wouldn't elaborate, but the assertion gave rise to speculation that they might argue it was consensual sex. At the same time, some of Strauss-Kahn's supporters in France, where he was considered a possible challenger next year to President Nicolas Sarkozy, have suggested he may be the victim of a setup.

The woman's lawyer, Shapiro, said there was no truth to suggestions that she had fabricated her account, describing her as an honest woman with "no agenda."

"Her life has now been turned upside down. She can't go home. She can't go back to work. She has no idea what her future will be, what she will be able to do to support herself and her daughter. This has been nothing short of a cataclysmic event in her life," Shapiro said. He said she "feels alone in the world."

The woman, he said, came to the US seven years ago under "very difficult circumstances" and is raising her daughter by herself now that the girl's father is dead. The family was granted asylum in the US, and she is a legal resident. She has worked at the hotel for three years, according to Shapiro.