Judge Rejects Strauss-Kahn’s Claim of Diplomatic Immunity
Source: New York Times
A judge has rejected Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s claim of diplomatic immunity in his effort to dismiss a civil suit filed by a hotel housekeeper who claimed that the French leader had sexually assaulted her.
Justice Douglas E. McKeon of State Supreme Court in the Bronx characterized Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s attempt to claim diplomatic immunity as “his own version of a Hail Mary pass,” noting that he had resigned from his position as the head of the International Monetary Fund when the suit was filed.
A provision of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations granted certain diplomatic agents an extension of diplomatic immunity for a period of time after one’s official duties have ended, but Justice McKeon, in a written decision released on Tuesday, ruled that the extension did not apply to Mr. Strauss-Kahn.
Mr. Strauss-Kahn was arrested in May 2011 after Nafissatou Diallo, a housekeeper at the Sofitel in Midtown Manhattan, told detectives that Mr. Strauss-Kahn had sexually assaulted her in his 28th-floor suite at the hotel. In August, citing doubt about Ms. Diallo’s credibility, the Manhattan district attorney’s office moved to dismiss the criminal sexual assault case. By then, Ms. Diallo had filed her civil suit in the Bronx, where she lives.
Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/02/nyregion/strauss-kahns-claim-of-diplomatic-immunity-is-rejected.html
