NEW YORK — Former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn was released from jail Friday and will be held under house arrest near ground zero after the luxury apartment where he had arranged to stay fell through because the neighbors objected to the media frenzy.
Prosecutors said he will be temporarily housed in a building on a small street in lower Manhattan within the Police Department’s “Ring of Steel” — a network of private and police cameras near where the World Trade Center stood.
While he is there, his family and lawyers will look for a more permanent place for him to await trial on charges he tried to rape a hotel maid.
The original plan was for Strauss-Kahn to move into a luxury residential hotel under armed guard on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Even though the address was never officially released, police and reporters converged on the building, the Bristol Plaza.
“Last night there was an effort by the media to invade the building,” said Strauss-Kahn attorney William Taylor. “That is why the tenants in the building will not accept his living there.”
Late in the day, after the snag over where the banker would serve his house arrest had been resolved, Strauss-Kahn was released from the city’s Rikers Island jail on $1 million cash bail. The 62-year-old former managing director of the powerful International Monetary Fund had been behind bars since Saturday.
During his time in temporary housing in lower Manhattan, at least one armed guard will be watching him at all times, and he will have to wear an ankle bracelet. His apartment’s exterior doors will be outfitted with alarms and video cameras, on orders from the judge who granted bail.
Prosecutors had argued against Strauss-Kahn’s release, warning he might use his wealth and international connections to flee to France and thwart efforts to extradite him, like the filmmaker Roman Polanski.
