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from www.seattletimes.nwsource.com – Three months after authorizing Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s swift indictment after his arrest on sexual-assault charges, the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus Vance Jr., has decided to ask a judge to dismiss the case, a person briefed on the matter said Sunday.

Vance’s decision would end the case with no determination on whether the encounter between Strauss-Kahn, who was then the managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and a hotel housekeeper who went to clean his suite was criminal or consensual, several law-enforcement officials have said.

While there has been widespread speculation that Vance would drop the case, it is nonetheless an extraordinary turn of events, for both Strauss-Kahn, 62, an enormously powerful international banker and a leading candidate for the French presidency before his arrest, and his accuser, Nafissatou Diallo, a 33-year-old immigrant from Guinea.

Her credibility as a witness began to crumble after prosecutors discovered what they characterized as a series of lies she had told, though none bore directly on her version of the encounter with Strauss-Kahn.

Since Strauss-Kahn was taken into custody hours after the May 14 incident at the Sofitel New York, the case has played out in an almost carnivallike atmosphere, with legions of representatives of foreign news outlets camped out in front of the courthouse in Lower Manhattan. The drama has dominated the headlines in France, where his arrest and star turn in handcuffs before the cameras sparked outrage.

Strauss-Kahn, who was led out of a police building in handcuffs in May and held under house arrest until his bail conditions were relaxed early last month, would be free to return to France after a judge, responding to a motion from the district attorney, formally dismissed the seven-count indictment.

The outcome would leave Diallo with no recourse to pursue criminal charges against the Frenchman. But she has filed a civil lawsuit seeking unspecified monetary damages from Strauss-Kahn for what the suit called a “violent and sadistic attack” that humiliated and degraded her.

Vance’s office has readied a motion known as a dismissal on recommendation, which one person briefed on the matter said will detail the reasons he and his aides believe that the case cannot be proved beyond a reasonable doubt.

Vance’s decision in the highly charged case, which ultimately became a credibility contest of sorts between Diallo and Strauss-Kahn, was said to have grown out of prosecutors’ assessment that her repeated lies, including multiple denials that she had given any consideration to Strauss-Kahn’s money, would open her to withering cross-examination.

A day after the encounter, she and a friend who was in jail had a recorded telephone conversation about Strauss-Kahn’s wealth, a fact that the investigators would not learn until six weeks later, after Diallo had been asked repeatedly about the subject.

She is the only witness who could testify to the central allegation in the case: that Strauss-Kahn forced her to perform oral sex.

At a court hearing, the district attorney’s office revealed that it had uncovered several facts damaging to the housekeeper’s credibility. Diallo had lied in her asylum application to immigration authorities and falsely told prosecutors she had been gang raped in her native country, according to a letter filed by prosecutors. She also was untruthful in her tax returns, the letter said.

The decision by Vance, the son of President Carter’s secretary of state who practiced law in Seattle for 16 years and taught at Seattle University, will probably draw fire on several fronts, including from black leaders and women’s groups who have urged him to allow a jury to weigh the facts and render a decision.

Diallo’s lawyer, Kenneth Thompson, acknowledged that his client may have credibility issues, but he said other evidence weighted the case in her favor, including other hotel workers who saw Diallo in a distraught state shortly after she said she was attacked.

“You must also consider the overwhelming physical evidence that Vance and his prosecutors pointed to just weeks ago,” Thompson said. “Forensic evidence does not lie.”

Even one of the controversial phone conversations with Diallo’s friend in jail corroborated her account of the attack, Thompson said. Diallo described the assault to her friend just as she had the previous day to detectives and prosecutors, according to Thompson.

Law-enforcement officials have said, however, that though the forensic evidence in the case shows that a sexual encounter occurred, it does not prove that it was forcible.

From his first court hearing, Strauss-Kahn’s lawyers indicated that a sexual encounter did take place in the suite but suggested it was consensual.

Strauss-Kahn, a leading figure in the Socialist Party who stepped down from his post at the IMF because of his arrest, was charged with attempted rape, sexual abuse, criminal sexual act, unlawful imprisonment and forcible touching.

Prosecutors were initially successful in getting a judge to order him held without bail, saying their case was strong and corroborated by physical evidence. They also said the housekeeper had given a compelling, unwavering account of what happened inside the hotel room.

A state Supreme Court justice eventually granted Strauss-Kahn bail on $1 million cash and $5 million bond.

But he was held under extraordinary conditions in which he remained under house arrest in a town house, monitored by an armed guard. He could leave the town house only under limited circumstances.

Those restrictions were lifted in a reversal by prosecutors July 1, about six weeks after the encounter.