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May 17, 2011

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'I kicked him, he unhooked my bra ...'

A FRENCH lawyer said yesterday that his client was considering filing a legal complaint against Dominique Strauss-Kahn over an alleged sexual incident almost a decade ago.

David Koubbi said Tristane Banon, a writer, could file a complaint over an alleged incident that took place when she went to interview Strauss-Kahn, a former French finance minister, in an apartment.

Strauss-Kahn, a Socialist who has been the frontrunner for next year's French presidential election, was charged in New York at the weekend with sexually assaulting a hotel chambermaid. His lawyer said he would plead not guilty.

The alleged French assault is said to have happened in 2002. Major newspapers in France, including the left-leaning Liberation, Le Parisien and the conservative Le Figaro carried accounts of the incident.

A graphic description of the alleged attack, recounted by Banon on a 2007 television programme, was posted on the Internet and widely quoted on French blogs and websites.

In the clip, Banon, 22 at the time, said she had asked to talk to Strauss-Kahn for a book of interviews with leading figures about the "biggest mistake you ever made."

She told how he had insisted on holding her hand during the interview and then made advances.

"It ended really badly. We ended up fighting. It finished really violently," the clip shows her saying. "We fought on the floor. It wasn't a case of a couple of slaps. I kicked him, he unhooked my bra, he tried to open my jeans," she said.

The politician acted, she said, like a "rutting chimpanzee."

Under French law, sexual assault charges must be filed within three years but attempted rape charges can be brought up to 10 years after the alleged attack.

In an interview on French radio, Banon's lawyer said the charges laid against Strauss-Kahn in New York had brought the 2002 incident back to his client.

Banon did not file charges at the time of the alleged assault after her mother, a local Socialist Party councillor, persuaded her against bringing proceedings against the politician, who was a family friend.

She said she now regrets that decision.

 

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