In France, Skepticism and Anger Over Official’s Arrest

PARIS — France struggled to digest the scandal around one of the country's
most prominent figures, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, on Monday, with his
defenders questioning the initial New York police account and speculating
about entrapment and many others characterizing the photos of the handcuffed
suspect as insulting and unfair.

Mr. Strauss-Kahn, 62, was arrested on charges of attempted rape and illegal
imprisonment of a chambermaid in a French-owned hotel in midtown Manhattan,
the Sofitel, and was arraigned on Monday in New York.

The charges against a man thought to have the best chance of becoming France's next president in elections only a year away, and who is the prominent
managing director of the International Monetary Fund, have exploded most
political assumptions here and caused some soul-searching, especially among
the French press, about whether it had failed to dig deeply into Mr.
Strauss-Kahn's sexual history. But some of Mr. Strauss-Kahn's supporters
quickly rallied to his defense, raising questions about the American
handling of the case and hinting at a role by his political opponents.

The blogosphere and the press, especially on the Internet, were busy trying
to dissect Mr. Strauss-Kahn's day before he boarded the Air France flight
to Paris. Citing unnamed allies of Mr. Strauss-Kahn, they suggest that he
had lunch with his daughter before boarding the plane to make a flight that
had been reserved in advance, that he may have checked out of his hotel
before lunch with his daughter, and that he may have had lunch after the
alleged attempted rape took place. In other words, they suggested, he did
not flee in haste, as the police suggested in their comments on the case.

The Socialist politician Jean-Christophe Cambadélis, a close ally of Mr.
Strauss-Kahn, said: "In the file, there are a lot of contradictions
beginning with the escape, which was acknowledged today didn't happen."

On the Web site of RMC.fr radio, for example, claiming to cite information
from Mr. Strauss-Kahn's lawyers, the writers laid out the shape of an
alibi – that he checked out of the hotel around 12:30 p.m., returning his
keys to reception, and met his daughter for lunch before going to the
airport, where he realized he had lost one of his cellphones, calling the
hotel and asking that they return it to him at the airport. The New York
police originally estimated the time of the alleged attack on the maid at
about 1 p.m., but have since revised it to around noon.

Another question raised was about the timing of the flood of "tweets" around
the scandal, with the first one reportedly sent by a French student who is a
member of President Nicolas Sarkozy's center-right party.

It was at 4:59 p.m. New York time that J_Pinet posted this message on
twitter: "A friend in the United States just told me that DSK was arrested
by police in a hotel an hour ago."

Twenty-four minutes later, a tweet by Arnaud Dassier, who ran Mr. Sarkozy's
online election campaign in 2007, spread the news further, apparently before
any New York newspaper. Mr. Dassier is a shareholder in the Web site
Atlantico.fr, which Strauss-Kahn allies accused earlier this month of
disseminating photos of him and his wife getting into a Porsche in a bid to
tarnish his reputation with common voters.

On Monday, Atlantico published what it said were reports from the police and
the French consulate in New York about the case, asserting that Mr.
Strauss-Kahn had scratches on his back and left traces of DNA behind.

Others, of course, said that a set-up seemed even more implausible than the
alleged events. Bradley D. Simon, a former federal prosecutor turned
criminal defense attorney with offices in New York and Paris, thought the
idea "far-fetched" and said that "the only way there can be a set-up in the
first place is that there is an acknowledgement that he is predisposed to
such actions."

Or as Libération, normally sympathetic to the left, concluded in an
editorial Monday: "Dominique Strauss-Kahn knew that he was his own worst
enemy."

But there was also outrage about the photos of Mr. Strauss-Kahn cuffed in
custody. While the "perp walk" is a New York police tradition, allowing the
press to get photos of a suspect, a 2000 law in France tries to reinforce
the principle of the presumption of innocence by criminalizing the diffusion
of photos of an identifiable person in handcuffs who has not yet been
convicted.

The former French justice minister whose name is on the law, Elisabeth
Guigou, said she found the photos of Mr. Strauss-Kahn in cuffs indicative of
"a brutality, a violence, of an incredible cruelty, and I'm happy that we
don't have the same judiciary system."

Ms. Guigou, a Socialist like Mr. Strauss-Kahn and a member of parliament,
told France Info radio that the American system "is an accusatory system,"
while in France, "we have a system that takes perhaps a little more time but
which is, despite everything, more protective of individual rights."

Max Gallo, a prominent historian and commentator, agreed that the two
systems are different. "It's the first time in the history of France that
a top-level figure is treated like a common criminal whose guilt is already
established," he said. "But it also manifests an egalitarianism in the
American justice system that surprises us in France."

He said, "People are asking: Was it really necessary to do that?"

The images struck several commentators as being more akin to scenes from
American television crime dramas – dubbed versions enjoy tremendous
popularity in France, including "C.S.I.," known as "Les Experts," and
"Law and Order," known as "New York Police Judiciaire" – than from
French life.

"It was images from Greek tragedy mixed with those of American TV series,"
the centrist politician François Bayrou said at a press conference.
"Everyone who has seen these images has had their throat tighten, they were
so arresting and confounding. It's the destiny of a man that is toppling,
with very important consequences for himself, his party, his country."

There was also some media introspection. Alain Frachon, a senior editor at
Le Monde, said: "There is media shyness when it comes to powerful political
people. We are ready to argue their ideas, but there is a shyness about
their lives." Still, he said, "the question of possible crimes is
different. This is not a national omerta, the situation is not the same as
20 years ago."