Dominique Strauss-Kahn, his hopes for the French presidency scuppered by a sensational New York sex scandal, returned to Paris on Sunday to a media frenzy and an uneasy welcome from his Socialist allies.
The former IMF chief and his journalist wife Anne Sinclair arrived at dawn at
Charles de Gaulle airport on an Air France flight and were whisked off in a black Peugeot to their apartment in the chic Place des Vosges.
They smiled and waved but said nothing to the horde of journalists and handful of supporters awaiting their arrival at the airport and declined to comment when mobbed by media as they reached their home in the Marais area of Paris.
Strauss-Kahn, 62, has promised to talk about what he has called his “terrible and unjust ordeal” but an aide told journalists that he would not make any statement. Dressed in a dark suit and white shirt, Kahn boarded a flight at New York’s JFK airport late Saturday, less than two weeks after sexual assault charges against him were dropped.
Three and a half months ago police hauled the Socialist politician off a plane that was about to leave for Paris from the same airport and charged him with the sexual assault and attempted rape of the hotel maid Nafissatou Diallo.