Strauss-Kahn accuser to file civil suit "soon" (Reuters)

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A lawyer for the hotel maid who accused former International Monetary Fund Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn of sexually assaulting her in a New York hotel said on Thursday he planned to file a civil lawsuit soon.

Kenneth Thompson, the lawyer for Nafissatou Diallo, did not specify to reporters at a press conference exactly when a civil lawsuit against Strauss-Kahn would be filed.

"I said soon. Soon is soon," he told reporters.

Diallo made an emotional public appeal at a highly unusual press conference for people to believe her story. The criminal case has teetered for weeks since prosecutors disclosed they had uncovered several discrepancies in Diallo's account of her past.

Diallo told reporters she cannot stop crying and that she wants no other woman to suffer like her, first at the hands of a powerful attacker and then by having her story questioned.

"I am going through a lot. My daughter, we are going through a lot. We are crying everyday. We can't sleep," an emotional and tearful Diallo said.

"A lot of things they say about me are not true," the woman, called "Nafi" by her friends, said.

The 62-year-old Strauss-Kahn faces criminal charges including attempted rape, sexual assault and sexual abuse.

Strauss-Kahn, who was expected to be a contender to be the next French president, denies the charges and contends any sex that afternoon with Diallo was consensual.

His lawyers have labeled the Diallo's effort to speak out as a last-ditch effort by her and her lawyers to extract money from the former IMF chief.

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Syrian opposition calls for civil disobedience (Reuters)

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Syrians should wage a campaign of civil disobedience to try to force President Bashar al-Assad from power, an exiled dissident said on Saturday at a meeting in Turkey aimed at forging a united opposition.

The opposition, divided between Islamists and liberals, is holding a "National Salvation Congress" to try to unite behind the goal of ending 41 years of Assad family rule, but is struggling to agree on whether to form a shadow government.

"I'm for anything that unifies the Syrian people and helps our people inside, and unifies our ranks in confronting this illegitimate repressive regime that has usurped power and human rights," opposition figure Wael al Hafez told the meeting in Istanbul, echoing comments made by others.

"We want to raise the intensity of the peaceful confrontation by civil disobedience and to choke the regime economically and paralyze the state with the least damage."

The West has criticized Assad's crackdown on four months of protests demanding political freedoms. On Friday, his troops killed at least 32 civilians, including 23 in the capital Damascus.

Secret police killed one protester and wounded five on Saturday when they opened fire at pro-democracy demonstrators in the eastern border town of Albu Kamal near Iraq's Sunni heartland.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, visiting Turkey, said Friday's protests in Syria had been the largest yet, and Assad's repression was "troubling."

"The brutality has to stop," she said in a televised interview with a group of young Turkish people at an Istanbul coffee shop on Saturday.

LINGERING HOPE OF REFORM, RECONCILIATION

Later at a joint news conference with Turkey's Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, Clinton said: "Now Syria's future is up to the Syrian people, but of course the efforts by the opposition to come together to organize and to articulate an agenda are an important part of political reform."

She expressed hope that the people and Assad's government could be reconciled to work together.

"It's what the Syrian people are doing, trying to form an opposition that can provide a pathway hopefully in peaceful cooperation with government to a better future."

Davutoglu repeated warnings to Assad's government to implement reform or face being swept away by democratic forces.

"A government that does not consider the demands of its society won't survive," said Davutoglu, who had earlier urged Assad to undertake "shock therapy" reforms.

"Assad said he was going to have multi -party groups in parliament ... I hope Syria has opposition parties and that Syria has opposition parties that raise their voice," he said.

The opposition said security forces had targeted a wedding hall in Damascus where it had planned to hold a simultaneous conference, connected by video link to the one in Istanbul.

"Several martyrs are fallen and others have been arrested," said Haitham al-Maleh, a former judge who was among political prisoners released by Assad in March when the uprising began.

"The regime cannot deny us our freedoms. This state is for the Syrians, not Assad family's property," Maleh told the meeting in Istanbul of several hundred people.

Most of his audience have lived in exile for years, if not decades, and many have paid a heavy price for their dissent in previous crackdowns by the ruling Baath Party. Unlike other meetings in recent months in Turkey, some members of the opposition inside Syria managed to attend.

Assad's promises of reform have failed to quell the protests. Rights groups say some 1,400 civilians have been killed in the crackdown.

"My feeling is that the situation has reached a point of no return and the regime has also reached a point it cannot retreat after such a level of bloodshed," said Hassan Najar, an exiled Syrian originally from Aleppo, now based in Germany.

"After 41 years, the question is how can you bring together a fragmented opposition? We have had only four months and what has been achieved is a miracle."

The dissidents at the meeting appeared to fall into two camps -- Islamist and secular liberals. Splits seemed to open among them over whether to form a government-in-waiting or wait to see how the uprising unfolds, and they could opt form a united body without presuming a leadership role.

"People are demanding that the opposition speed up unifying its efforts so that people deal with it as a credible alternative," Ali Sadreddin Bayanouni, the former head of Syria's Muslim Brotherhood told Reuters.

(Writing by Simon Cameron-Moore; editing by Elizabeth Piper)

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Civil suit against Strauss-Kahn still seen viable (Reuters)

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The question has floated in the background for nearly two months, ever since police arrested Dominique Strauss-Kahn on charges of sexually assaulting a New York hotel maid: Would his accuser pursue a civil suit against him?

The answer has changed little since serious doubts about the woman's credibility put in jeopardy the criminal case against the former International Monetary Fund chief.

A successful civil case could bring a multimillion-dollar judgment against Strauss-Kahn, if a jury finds his accuser's story persuasive.

Civil litigators say the accuser would still have viable civil claims against Strauss-Kahn even if criminal charges against him are dismissed. But any judgment against him would prove difficult to enforce if the prosecution ends and he returns home to France.

"A civil case could certainly still succeed on the merits," said Meg Garvin, the executive director of the National Crime Victim Law Institute at Lewis & Clark University Law School in Oregon.

Civil lawsuits do proceed after criminal prosecutions fail. The former American football player O.J. Simpson, charged with killing his ex-wife and her friend, was acquitted in 1995 but later found liable in a wrongful-death civil suit brought by the victims' families and ordered to pay more than $30 million in damages.

In 2004, prosecutors dropped rape charges against Kobe Bryant, the basketball star, when his accuser refused to testify, but she filed a lawsuit against him and settled the case out of court for an unspecified amount.

The lawyers for the accuser in the Strauss-Kahn case have said they are not considering a lawsuit and did not respond to requests for comment.

BURDEN OF PROOF

Criminal and civil trials have significantly different burdens of proof required to prevail.

In a criminal case, where a guilty verdict can result in imprisonment, prosecutors must prove the defendant's guilt beyond reasonable doubt, the law's strictest standard.

In civil cases, where the loser is liable for money damages, the standard is a "preponderance of the evidence" -- essentially, that it was more likely than not that the defendant was responsible.

This distinction can be particularly appealing to a witness who, like Strauss-Kahn's accuser, has credibility problems.

Prosecutors revealed she had told authorities numerous lies, including fabricating a story about being gang-raped in Guinea in order to gain U.S. asylum. She also changed details of her story about what happened after her encounter with Strauss-Kahn in his luxury hotel suite, though her account about what took place in the room has remained steadfast.

"There's nothing from what I've heard about the alleged problems with the case that would make me immediately shy away," said John Clune, the lawyer who represented the accuser in the Bryant case.

Unlike in a criminal case, where a jury may not draw any conclusions from a defendant's decision not to testify, civil defendants typically must give their side during depositions and at trial. There is no Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination, and if a defendant refuses to answer, the jury is permitted to make inferences from that refusal.

In Strauss-Kahn's case, a civil suit could shift the focus from her credibility to his own record of honesty, given reports about his past infidelities.

"This is exactly why civil defendants settle all the time," said Julie Suk, a professor at Cardozo School of Law. "They may not think there's a winnable case against them, but it's often much more costly, both in terms of lawyer fees and personal, psychic cost."

Given Strauss-Kahn's wealth, his accuser still risks being perceived as having financial motives in going after him.

According to the woman's lawyers, prosecutors said they turned up a recorded conversation between her and a man detained in an Arizona jail in which she said "words to the effect" that "this guy has a lot of money. I know what I am doing."

RETURN TO FRANCE

If criminal charges are dropped and Strauss-Kahn heads home to France, collecting damages from him might prove difficult.

While the United States and France do not have an extradition treaty, which would prevent Strauss-Kahn from being forcibly returned here for a criminal trial, the two countries have treaties that would probably ensure that he could be served with a civil complaint and a subpoena to testify, international law experts say.

If Strauss-Kahn chose not to appear, a New York court could enter a judgment against him. But collecting damages would likely require the cooperation of a French court.

Paul Cohen, an attorney who specializes in international law for Thompson & Knight in New York, called the chances of extracting money from Strauss-Kahn if he is back in France "extraordinarily low."

"It has nothing at all to do with the merits -- it's all to do with the geography and the jurisdictional issues that come with it," he said. "The French courts may not appreciate a civil complaint like this that is in effect a proxy for criminal prosecution."

(Editing by Sandra Maler)

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