As Case Unfolds, France Speculates and Steams

 

PARIS — France’s shock at the arrest of Dominique Strauss-Kahn on sexual assault charges has turned among some to suspicion and anger, 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.

Jean-Christophe Cambadélis, of the Socialist Party, questioned the police account of Dominique Strauss-Kahn's activities.

  Dominique Strauss-Kahn waited to be arraigned on Monday.

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 had 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.

On Tuesday, the opposition Socialists, who had been widely expected to choose Mr. Strauss-Kahn as their presidential candidate against President Nicolas Sarkozy, planned to debate their plans for the future. But the party leader, Martine Aubry, declined to say whether she would contest the presidential primary when the deadline for nominations expires in July. “We have a timetable and today is not the moment,” she told France Info radio. “We are not changing anything in our timetable.” She also said Mr. Strauss-Kahn must be seen as innocent unless proven not to be.

Apart from the political turmoil, Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s arrest has 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 raised questions about the American handling of the case and hinted at a role by his political opponents.

The blogosphere and news outlets, 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 suggested 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 attack took place. In other words, they suggested, he did not flee in haste, as the police had said 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, and called the hotel to ask that it be returned 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 Twitter posts 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 post 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 Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s allies accused this month of disseminating photographs 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.

Ma?a de la Baume and Scott Sayare contributed reporting.