The managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Dominique Strauss-Kahn, was taken off an Air France plane at Kennedy International Airport minutes before it was to depart for Paris on Saturday, in connection with the sexual attack of a maid at a Midtown Manhattan hotel, the authorities said.

Strauss-Kahn, 62, who was widely expected to become the Socialist candidate for the French presidency, was apprehended by detectives of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey in the first-class section of the jetliner, and immediately turned over to detectives from the Midtown South Precinct, officials said.

The New York Police Department arrested Strauss-Kahn at 2:15 am on Sunday “on charges of criminal sexual act, attempted rape, and an unlawful imprisonment in connection with a sexual assault on a 32-year-old chambermaid in the luxury suite of a Midtown Manhattan hotel yesterday” about 1 pm, Deputy Commissioner Paul J Browne, the department’s chief spokesman, said.

In the New York case, Browne said that it was about 1 pm on Saturday when the maid, a 32-year-old woman, entered Strauss-Kahn’s suite — Room 2806 — believing it was unoccupied.

He said that the suite, which cost $3,000 a night, had a foyer, a conference room, a living room and a bedroom, and that Strauss-Khan had checked in on Friday.

As she was in the foyer, “he came out of the bathroom, fully naked, and attempted to sexually assault her,” Browne said, adding, “He grabs her, according to her account, and pulls her into the bedroom and onto the bed.” He locked the door to the suite, Browne said.

“She fights him off, and he then drags her down the hallway to the bathroom, where he sexually assaults her a second time,” Browne added.

At some point during the assault, the woman broke free, he said, and “she fled, reported it to other hotel personnel, who called 911.”

“When the police arrived, he was not there.” Browne said Strauss-Kahn appeared to have left in a hurry. In the room, investigators found his cellphone, which he had left behind, and one law enforcement official said that the investigation uncovered forensic evidence that would contain DNA.

“We learned that he was on an Air France plane,” Browne said adding the plane was held at the gate, where Strauss-Kahn was taken into custody. Later Saturday night, Strauss-Kahn was in a police holding cell.Browne said the city’s Emergency Medical Service took the maid to Roosevelt Hospital for what he described as treatment for “minor injuries.”

Wife doesn’t believe charge
The wife of IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn said on Sunday she does not believe “for one second” the accusations of sexual assault for which her husband was arrested in New York, reports AFP from Paris. “I have no doubt his innocence will be established,” Anne Sinclair, a well-known television journalist, said in a statement.