Strauss-Kahn Released into Home Detention

Strauss-Kahn's New Apartment Now A Tourist Attraction: MyFoxNY.com

Strauss-Kahn Released into Home Detention: MyFoxNY.com

NEW YORK -- Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who in six days went from an all-powerful titan of international finance to a jobless inmate, was released from jail on bail Friday and sent to home detention at an unspecified New York location.

A judge ordered the former head of the IMF, charged with sexually assaulting a housekeeper at his luxury hotel, to be housed in a home detention location in downtown Manhattan, close to Ground Zero.

The schedule for his release hit a snag earlier Friday when plans fell through for him to stay in a posh apartment in a midtown Manhattan high rise rented by his wife, journalist Anne Sinclair.

At a court hearing Friday afternoon, defense lawyer William Taylor said "The reason why they changed plans is because the media invaded the first place." Photos of the scene showed the building encircled by television news vans and Sky News reported there were about 100 news personnel on the scene.

However, the New York Post reported Sinclair was turned away once it was discovered Strauss-Kahn would be living there under home confinement.

The New York Times said Strauss-Kahn would stay instead at a corporate housing building used by the security company Stroz Friedberg, which he hired to guard him as part of his release agreement. A call to the Stroz Friedberg office in New York produced a brisk "no comment."

As the final details of his detention were worked out in court Friday afternoon, Strauss-Kahn, who has been locked up since Monday, remained in his small, single cell at New York's Rikers Island prison complex.

On Thursday, he was ordered released on $1 million bail and $5 million bond after he agreed to a package of restrictive conditions that included 24-hour home confinement, round-the-clock armed guards and 24-hour surveillance via ankle monitor. He will be allowed to leave only to visit court, doctors, a house of worship or his lawyers.

At the same court hearing, prosecutors disclosed that a grand jury had indicted Strauss-Kahn on counts of committing a criminal sexual act in the first degree, attempted rape, sexual abuse in the first and third degrees, unlawful imprisonment in the second degree and forcible touching. Several of the charges are high-level felonies.

Just one week ago, the silver-haired, 62-year-old Strauss-Kahn was front and center on the world stage, moving commandingly through the upper realms of power and money as head of the IMF and a front-runner candidate to take on Nicolas Sarkozy in France's presidential election next year.

But last Saturday he was plucked off an Air France flight to Paris just minutes before takeoff after a maid at Manhattan's luxury Sofitel hotel, where he had been staying in a $3,000 a night suite, claimed he had sexually assaulted her when she appeared to clean his room.

One of his attorneys, Benjamin Brafman, suggested at an earlier court appearance that he will argue the sex was consensual.

The Daily Beast, in a report Friday, quoted sources familiar with the prosecution's case as saying that as soon as Strauss-Kahn checked into his hotel suite, he called the front desk and asked the receptionist if she would like to join him for a drink. The woman demurred, according to The Daily Beast.

On Wednesday, Strauss-Kahn resigned as the IMF's managing director. In a resignation letter released by the IMF board, he denied "with the greatest possible firmness all of the allegations that have been made against me."

French finance minister Christine Lagarde, who has been frequently mentioned as a candidate to succeed him, said Friday she would not comment on any possible candidacy.