Strauss-Kahn Arrives in France
Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former head of the International Monetary Fund and onetime hopeful for the French presidency, returned to his native land early Sunday morning, in a low-key coda to the international furor that erupted when he was arrested in mid-May and charged with sexually assaulting a New York hotel housekeeper.
Mr. Strauss-Kahn and his wife, Anne Sinclair, landed at Charles de Gaulle airport shortly after 7 a.m. and emerged about 40 minutes later, breezing past a crowd of reporters without speaking before getting into a car and leaving.
A cluster of women who said they administer a Facebook page in support of Mr. Strauss-Kahn were the only supporters on hand. One woman, who identified herself only as Hélène and appeared to be in her late 30s, insisted that Mr. Strauss-Kahn was innocent of all the charges against him.
Indeed, the charges were dismissed at the request of the Manhattan district attorney’s office on Aug. 23 after doubts arose about the credibility of Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s accuser, Nafissatou Diallo, a housekeeper at the Sofitel New York in midtown Manhattan.
But Mr. Strauss-Kahn, who was once seen as a contender in the 2012 French presidential elections for the Socialist party and who appeared to have a good chance of defeating the incumbent, President Nicolas Sarkozy, now faces a much more uncertain future.
Last week, as France awaited the man universally known here as “DSK,” a row erupted among the Socialists after Michel Rocard, a former prime minister, suggested that Mr. Strauss-Kahn suffered from a “mental sickness” and could not control his impulses.