Nicholas Kamm / AFP – Getty Images file
NEW YORK — The leader of the International Monetary Fund, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, was taken into custody on Saturday, minutes before he was to fly to Paris from John F. Kennedy International Airport, NBC station WNBC reported.
Strauss-Kahn, a possible 2012 candidate for president of France, was pulled from his first-class seat on an Air France flight by officers from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and turned over to Manhattan detectives, a Port Authority spokesman told The New York Times.
He was accused of a sodomizing a maid at a Times Square hotel earlier in the day, the authorities said. He has not been charged but had retained an attorney and was not making statements to police, authorities said.
Strauss-Kahn, 62, allegedly crept up behind a 32-year-old maid after she entered his room and forced her to perform oral sex on him, sources told the New York Daily News. The New York Post said he was naked and had emerged from the bathroom.
The woman broke free and ran out of the room, WNBC said. Strauss-Kahn quickly headed for the airport, sources told the Daily News.
New York police top spokesman Paul Browne said Strauss-Kahn left his cellphone and other personal items in his Sofitel hotel room.
“It looked like he got out of there in a hurry,” Browne said.
Strauss-Kahn was apprehended at 4:40 p.m. EDT by two Port Authority detectives who suddenly boarded Air France Flight 23, as the plane idled on the tarmac, John P. L. Kelly, an agency spokesman, told the Times.
