STRAUSS-KAHN: DIALLO PHOTOGRAPHS RIDDLE

‘Nafissatou Diallo’ yesterday (Mark III model)

As Strauss-Kahn accuser goes public, the maid’s ‘identity’ changes yet again

This is Nafissatou Diallo strolling in New York yesterday following her interview by ABC News, and splash in Newsweek magazine. She doesn’t, however, bear any resemblance to the last ‘accepted’ picture of Nafissatou Diallo:

Nafissatou Mark II

….but she could easily be an older version of the first one:

Nafissatou Mark I

Now the Mark I snap was hastily withdrawn right at the start of the saga – presumably because it didn’t fit the image being put out by the DA and her family at the time: that of a saintly person dressed in traditional Islamic garb. Most people (The Slog included) accepted Mark II as the real deal; but it doesn’t look that way now.

This is crucially important in the American media arena, as nobody there has as yet seen any pictures of her outside the blogosphere. So perhaps US blogging friends could see their way to expanding awareness of this over there.

We also have to ask why Ms Diallo has gone public in the middle of an extended period of ‘additional investigation’ requested by the DA that was allegedly to do with establishing the level of conspiracy involved. DSK’s lawyers have already dismissed the ABC revelations as ‘an unseemly circus designed to inflame public opinion’. During the interview, Diallo tells ABC, ““I push him. I get up. I wanted to scare him. I said, ‘Look, there is my supervisor right there. But Strauss-Kahn said no one was there to hear”. She alleges he then went on to yank up her uniform dress, tear down her pantyhose, forcefully grab her crotch and then grip her head and force her to perform oral sex. He was obviously in at least two minds.

Forgive me for sounding unsympathetic here, but the truly silly bit of the associated Newsweek piece is the magazine’s observation that she was ‘going public to tell a story from which she had never wavered’.

Except for which rooms she was in, what time she told the hotel authorities, how she arrived in the US, whether her partner was alive or dead, and why she rang a prison in Arizona to discuss how much money she could make out of the case.

There is more murkiness to come here: but the Marks I, II and III enigma is one that deserves a credible explanation. And learning the real identity of her motormouth ‘brother’ would help too.

STRAUSS-KAHN’S ACCUSER: THE FACTS

Hotel management surprised that maid didn’t know identity of the man in Suite 2806

Nafissatou Diallo

The accuser of IMF boss Dominic Strauss-Kahn has been outed by Paris Match as Nafissatou Diallo. But some of the ‘facts’ of the case do not ring entirely true.

Nafissatou Diallo is a native of Guinea. She is a 32 year-old unmarried Muslim, with a 15 year-old daughter. Her dress code, marital status and age of having the child (17) would all suggest she isn’t a strict Islamist.

Yet neighbours ‘quoted’ in New York tabloids allegedly described her as ‘ a practising Muslim who wears a veil‘. Perhaps the neighbours were visually challenged.

Le Figaro last night reported that posters of Strauss-Kahn were  everywhere in the New York hotel (Sofitel). The paper commented, ‘Not surprisingly, the hotel management posted his face everywhere, advertising the fact that such a VIP had chosen their hotel as his venue’. Paris Match – which first named the maid – agreed with this account.

By any First World legal standards, this makes a nonsense of Ms Diallo ‘picking DSK out’ at an identity parade last Sunday afternoon.

The French website nanojv quotes an anonymous Sofitel source as saying, “Strauss-Kahn has stayed at this hotel six times since the start of 2010, and Nafi Diallo has been an employee here for three years. Her appearance of ignorance as to the identity of the man in suite 2806 strikes us as surprising”.

Yet Diallo – a French speaker – claims through her lawyer that she had no idea who the VIP was.

On France Deux TV last night, a fellow-guest told the channel’s reporter that in the lift immediately prior to checking out, “he [DSK] gave off an air of smiling normality”. The French State channel went on to claim that the IMF boss was “off to lunch with his daughter before catching the first available plane back to France”.

Yet the NYPD  insists he made a dash straight to Kennedy Airport in order to escape justice.

It also now transpires that the informant describing Diallo as “an exemplary mother” is not her brother at all, but one of her closest friends. That seems an odd mistake to make.

And answering The Slog’s question of yesterday, Le Monde reports that Diallo is being kept in hiding ‘by the American authorities’. Were she a mafia wife turning State’s evidence, that would be normal. But why the State has to ‘mind’ a non-US citizen accusing a man banged up on Riker’s Island escapes me.

A comment threader at the BusinessInsider website wrote as follows yesterday evening, ‘I love that the NYPD hauled his over-entitled butt right out of first class and off the airplane. That took some balls.’

I’d call that view worrying, mean, bigoted, xenophobic and unpleasantly envious. And bollocks.