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French power broker Dominique Strauss-Kahn has been placed on suicide watch at Rikers Island as he battles charges he tried to rape a Manhattan hotel maid, a law enforcement source said Tuesday.
The 62-year-old chief of the International Monetary Fund was stripped of his $2,500 Cartier watch and his fancy suits and given a blue jailhouse smock to wear, the source said.
Strauss-Kahn was put on a so-called “101 Watch,” Correction Department jargon for constant monitoring and suicide watch, the source said.
As the French presidential contender was adjusting to life behind bars, the brother of the accusser revealed her first words to him following Saturday’s attack at the Sofitel New York Hotel near Times Square.
“Someone tried to do something very bad to me,” the hotel worker told her brother when she called him from the hospital.
The brother said Tuesday that his sister was distraught when she phoned him from St. Luke’s Hospital following Saturday’s violent encounter in Strauss-Kahn’s luxury suite.
“No one wants to see his sister go through that,” said the 43-year-old brother, whose name is being withheld to protect the identity of his sister.
“She just said, ‘Someone tried to do something very bad to me,’” he said.
The victim is from West Africa, a single mother and devout Muslim who lives in the Bronx, according to her brother, who is a manager at a Harlem cafe.
He said seeing his sister in so much agony over the assault has made him “angry.”
“What would you feel if it was your sister? We are in pain,” he told The News in an earlier interview. “She’s very upset because she loves her job. She’s a wonderful, hardworking woman.”
But he said the powerful French politician will be punished. “This is America – he won’t get away with it,” he said.
“Justice will be served. That’s why we love America.”
Strauss-Kahn, meanwhile, says he didn’t force himself on the chambermaid.
As he was deemed a flight risk and held without bail, his lawyer offered a hint at how he will defend against the sex-assault rap.
“The forensic evidence, we believe, will not be consistent with a forcible encounter,” big-shot attorney Benjamin Brafman said. “And we believe there is a very defensible case.”
Prosecutor John McConnell described the accuser as a highly credible victim who “provided a very powerful and detailed account of the violent sexual assault.”
She told hotel staffers and cops her story immediately after the alleged attack Saturday afternoon at the Times Square-area Sofitel New York hotel. While sources say neither Strauss-Kahn nor the woman had bruises or scratches, McConnell said in court that a hospital exam supported her account.
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