The Freedom Bulletin

Photo by International Monetary Fund, via Flickr

A new article came out today in the New York Review of Books and Financial Times that reveals new details about the day Dominique Strauss-Kahn was arrested for allegedly sexually assaulting a hotel maid in New York City. It gives new support to the theory that he may have been the victim of a plot by his political opponents, the UMP party of French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Among the new revelations about DSK’s day at the Sofitel hotel:

• DSK suspected that his IMF-issued BlackBerry had been hacked, after a friend who worked as a researcher for the UMP texted him to warn him that at least one of his emails had been read by UMP members. On the morning of the fateful day, May 14, he called his wife, Anne Sinclair, and asked her to arrange for a friend to check out the phone to see if it was bugged.
• According to DSK’s own account, he packed his suitcase, which he left near the foyer of his room, number 2806, before taking a shower at about noon. If this is true, then the maid, Nafissatou Diallo, would have known that he was still in the room.
• The Sofitel’s security director, John Sheehan, called his superior, Rene-Georges Querry, as he was making his way to the hotel after Diallo reported the alleged assault. At the time, Querry was watching a soccer game with Sarkozy.
• Three minutes after receiving a message from Sheehan, hotel staff called the police. This was a full hour after Diallo reported the alleged assault to her supervisor.
• The Sofitel’s chief engineer and an unidentified man high-fived, clapped, and did a celebration dance that lasted three minutes after police were called.
• Diallo entered room 2820, on the same floor as DKS’s room, both before and after the encounter with DSK. The hotel refused to reveal who was staying in that room, but they had not yet checked out at the time Diallo entered the room. Diallo lied about this to investigators, telling them that she hadn’t gone in any rooms after the alleged assault because they all had “do not disturb” signs.
• When DSK left the hotel to meet his daughter for lunch, he inadvertently left his IMF BlackBerry behind. It was mysteriously deactivated at 12:51, and no one knows what happened to it since. It has never been recovered.

The truth may never be known, but one thing is for sure: many people jumped to conclusions far too quickly about what happened that day in room 2806.