Chechens killed in Quetta were unarmed: witnesses

QUETTA: While police and other law enforcement agencies’ investigators are silent about the killing on Tuesday of five Chechen suspects, witnesses say they were unarmed, had not put up any resistance and appeared ready to surrender.
A wounded woman attacker raises her hand next to a security checkpost during exchange of fire with Pakistani troops in Quetta on May 17, 2011.


Hospital sources said on Wednesday that the three women and two men had died on the spot of multiple bullet wounds.
All the bodies were found at a picket of the Frontier Corps surrounded by barbed wires.
According to officials who tried to reconstruct the scene, the suspects had gone to the checkpoint for shelter or to surrender
when they saw a heavy contingent of law enforcement personnel who had rushed to Killi Khezi after receiving a wireless message from a police post on the Airport Road about the entry into the area of a vehicle carrying suspected foreigners.
According to sources, they had hired the vehicle in Kuchlak, for coming to Quetta with the help of two local people.
They had crossed two police posts, but policemen deployed at the third one told them to accompany them to the police station near the airport.

While on way to the police station, the local men and the driver forcibly offloaded a policeman accompanying them and sped away. After some time, the driver, Ataullah, stopped the vehicle and refused to take them to Quetta.
The Chechens stepped off the vehicle, offered prayers in a mosque in Killi Khezi and asked local people to guide them to an address.
But all of a sudden they found themselves surrounded by police and Frontier Corps personnel.
The frightened Chechens moved to the nearby FC post, apparently to surrender or take refuge.
“They raised their hands as a gesture of surrender but law enforcement personnel opened indiscriminate fire at them,” witness Irfan Khan alleged.
A private TV channel telecast the shooting by security personnel and an injured woman waving her hand and pleading with them to stop firing.
“An investigation is under way on the basis of information being collected from some mobile phones and a diary,” Quetta police chief Daud Junejo told Dawn on Wednesday night.
He insisted that the Chechens were armed and had hurled a grenade at the checkpost.
However, no other official of the security agencies involved in the firing was ready to comment on the incident.
People who witnessed the action of law enforcement personnel expressed doubts about the official claims, saying that no
suicide vests, grenades or weapons were found from the bodies.
“I did not see any suicide jacket or bomb strapped to the bodies,” a senior journalist who was at the place when the incident took place told Dawn.
A senior police officer who had searched the bodies also said not even a knife had been found.
“Only five passports were found in their pockets,” he added.
The statements of police and FC officials were contradictory, too.
Police said the Chechens were carrying suicide jackets, while FC officials claimed that they had grenades in their hands.
Another question being raised here is why the suspects were not arrested when they were injured.
“They could have been arrested alive because they were unarmed,” an officer of a law enforcement agency said.
He said the suspects could have provided useful information.
The officer said he believed that security personnel opened fire out of a fear that the suspects might have been wearing suicide vests.
The bodies were lying in the morgue of the Bolan Medical Complex after postmortem.
Sources said the Chechens had not crossed into Pakistan from Afghanistan in the recent past and it appeared that they had come to Kuchlak from North Waziristan.
Their passports had expired two years ago, an official said.
Amanullah Kasi adds: The Balochistan National Party-M, Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party, both factions of the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam and Jamaat-i-Islami have called for an impartial investigation into the incident.Leaders of the parties said there were contradictions in the statements of security forces. They claimed that they had information about the arrival of terrorists intending to carry out suicide attacks, but failed to explain how the suspects had managed to reach Kuchlak, near the provincial capital.
The leaders said all vehicles were searched at the Baleli checkpoint by FC, police and Levies personnel, but the Chechens appeared to have dodged them.
They said that if the security forces’ version of the incident had been correct, the suicide vests would have blown up when police and FC personnel opened fire on the ‘terrorists’.

Asma criticises court verdict on PCO judges

HYDERABAD: Asma Jehangir, president of the Supreme Court Bar Association, has criticised the Supreme Court`s verdict in the PCO judges case.

Addressing members of the Sindh High Court Bar Association and Hyderabad District Bar Association here on Wednesday, she said: “Police use third degree treatment but some people are doing it in the judiciary with their pen. This pen embodies the trust of the nation and it should not be used for settling personal scores and rivalries.”
Ms Jehangir was commenting on the verdict which the Supreme Court had announced earlier in the day, rejecting intra-court appeals of judges who had taken oath under the Provisional Constitution Order and asking the government to issue a notification of their dismissal.
“I don`t want to see justice stifled. Although he was a PCO judge, yet we supported the chief justice when he was sacked. We believed that if a dictator was allowed to ride roughshod over the judiciary this time, he would just bury the institution the next time,” she said.
Ms Jehangir said that decisions based on a feudal and `panchayati` mindset would not work any more.
She said she wanted to reform bar councils and associations. There was no legal aid system which was primarily the bar`s responsibility, adding that amendments to the registration act and defender`s law were needed.

Referring to a demand for appointment of judges from Sindh, she said sarcastically: “You are not being inducted as judges because you have talent.”
She said a strategy of `jalao` and `gherao` appeared to be working for induction of judges. “We have to reform this institution,” she added.
The SCBA chief acknowledged the leadership qualities of Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry and admitted that he was receptive to her criticism.
However, she said, she had reservations on some matters pertaining to case management that had badly affected lawyers in the apex court. “They don`t get the cause list until Friday.”
Lawyers of Karachi pass on cases to their colleagues in Islamabad because they cannot shunt between the two cities. “Lawyers are told at 4pm that the board is discharged,” she said.
She said senior lawyers complained that the situation was affecting their health and people had to wait for so long for interim relief that it became ineffective.
Ms Jehangir alleged that judges were interested in `big cases` that led to a `mela` in courtroom. “We are not interested in fanfare. Lawyers have to take care of their clients, practice and offices.”

She said she had refused to recommend lawyers for appointment as judges, adding that it was the judges` responsibility to find candidates and evaluate their ability because lawyers appeared in cases before them.
She regretted that those who were deemed to be having integrity and ability during the lawyers` movement were now being treated as incompetent and dishonest.
She said courts in Malakand were not being made functional for want of judges. “The judiciary will have to find judges among ourselves. There is no other way out.”
The SCBA chief said she had received messages from under-trial prisoners entreating her to do something to get judges posted in courts so that their appeals could be heard.
She said she wanted to know the formula for elevation of judges. “In the SHC (Sindh High Court), a woman and a minority community judge were shown the door on flimsy grounds,” she alleged. “The woman was relieved on a complaint by her stenographer.”
She called for making the judiciary representative of different ideologies.
Ms Jehangir was also critical of disposal of complicated constitutional petitions through short orders.

She said that she had not spoken in defence of those who had been recommended by the judicial commission because they had not been selected on merit. But the court allowed a constitutional petition relating to the appointments with a short order, for reasons to be recorded later, she said. “How can you assume the authority of parliament and dispose of the matter with a one-liner?” Judgments should have detailed reasons, she stressed.
Ms Jehangir expressed disapproval of the recent in-camera briefing to parliament on the killing of Osama bin Laden and said she could bet that the resolution adopted by the parliament would never be implemented.

Ms Jehangir also participated in a procession organised by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, visited the Mirpurkhas and Nawabshah district bars and offered condolences to the family of slain lawyer leader Ali Mohammad Dahiri in Nawabshah.

Al Qaeda releases posthumous bin Laden audio recording

CAIRO: Al Qaeda released a posthumous audio recording by Osama bin Laden in which the group’s ex-leader praised revolutions sweeping the Arab world, and called for more “tyrants” to be toppled.
Bin Laden backed the uprisings which began in Tunisia and have spread across much of North Africa and the Middle East. 


Extremists have often been conspicuous by their absence in the uprisings largely led by ordinary citizens angered by autocratic rule, corruption and economic mismanagement.
But bin Laden, who was killed in a US raid on May 2 in Pakistan, backed the uprisings which began in Tunisia and have spread across much of North Africa and the Middle East.
Al Qaeda had said bin Laden, who masterminded the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, recorded a message a week before his death. The audio was included in an Internet video lasting more than 12 minutes and posted on extremist websites.
In the audio, a voice which appears to be bin Laden’s referred to the uprisings which began in the Maghreb region of North Africa.
“The sun of the revolution has risen from the Maghreb. The light of the revolution came from Tunisia. It has given the nation tranquility and made the faces of the people happy.”
Tunisia’s president Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali was overthrown in January, followed by Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak after mass protests centred on Cairo’s Tahrir Square.
Bin Laden backed efforts to topple more leaders in the Muslim world, calling on al Qaeda supporters to “set up an operations room that follows up events and works in parallel to save the people that are struggling to bring down their tyrants”.
“Tunisia was the first but swiftly the knights of Egypt have taken a spark from the free people of Tunisia to Tahrir Square,” said bin Laden, adding: “It has made the rulers worried.”

Dominique Strauss-Kahn resigns as IMF chief

NEW YORK: The International Monetary Fund said Dominique Strauss-Kahn has resigned as its head following charges against him of sexual assault and attempted rape.
Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the International Monetary Fund, is arraigned at Manhattan Criminal Court in New York, on charges he sexually assaulted a hotel maid
“I deny with the greatest possible firmness all of the allegations that have been made against me,” Strauss-Kahn said in his letter of resignation, which was released by the IMF and dated May 18.
“I want to devote all my strength, all my time, and all my energy to proving my innocence.”
He will on Thursday for a second time request release on $1 million cash bail and placement under 24-hour house arrest while he awaits trial on charges of attempting to rape a hotel maid, his lawyers said. He is being held in New York’s notorious Rikers Island jail. “Yes there will definitely be a bail hearing tomorrow,” Manhattan District Attorney’s Office spokeswoman Erin Duggan told Reuters on Wednesday.
A mug shot of Strauss-Kahn, 62, taken more than 24 hours after he was pulled from a plane and detained on Saturday, showed him exhausted, his eyes downcast and half-closed and wearing a rumpled, open-neck shirt.
The photograph may fuel outrage in France over how a man who had been viewed as a strong contender for the French presidency has been paraded before the cameras before he has had a chance to defend himself in court.
Polls released in France on Wednesday showed 57 per cent of respondents thought the Socialist politician was definitely or probably the victim of a plot.
The woman Strauss-Kahn allegedly tried to rape, a 32-year-old widow from West Africa, testified on Wednesday before a grand jury. It will decide in secret whether there is enough evidence to formally press charges with an indictment.
“The proceedings are ongoing,” her lawyer, Jeffrey Shapiro, said.
Strauss-Kahn’s arrest has dashed his prospects to run for the French presidency in 2012 and raised broader issues over the future of the International Monetary Fund.
Developing countries are questioning Europe’s hold on the top IMF position, and jockeying to replace him has already begun.
European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said Europe would naturally put forward a candidate to replace Strauss-Kahn if he were to step down.
Germany, which wants a European to keep the job, said the IMF should deal with its immediate leadership internally and that it is too early to discuss a successor to Strauss-Kahn.
French officials said John Lipsky, the IMF’s American number two official whose term ends in August, would represent the Fund at next week’s Group of Eight summit in France.
In Strauss-Kahn’s absence, Lipsky is temporarily in charge of the IMF, which manages the world economy and is in the midst of helping euro zone states like Greece, Ireland and Portugal.

US assured of action against ‘sanctuaries’

ISLAMABAD: A flurry of activity of Monday provided hope that the Pak-US marriage of convenience was not over despite the recent bellowing and booming of the Pakistani leadership.
In this photo released by Pakistan Press Information department, Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari, third from left meets with US Senator John Kerry, second from left and US ambassador in Pakistan Cameron Munter, left, at President House in Islamabad, Pakistan on Monday, May 16, 2011. Kerry says he and Pakistani leaders have agreed to a "series of steps" to improve their nations' fraying ties. Kerry was in Pakistan on Monday amid high tensions over the US raid that killed Osama bin Laden in the South Asian country's northwest.


By the end of Senator John Kerry’s day-long stay in Islamabad it appeared that the US had convinced Pakistan to undertake several steps for proving its commitment to the fight against terrorism. These included returning the wreckage of the helicopter which had malfunctioned during the May 2 raid in Abbotabad and eliminating terrorist sanctuaries in tribal areas.
In exchange Washington has committed itself to a process, which if successful, will lead to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s visit to Islamabad for reviving the strategic dialogue which has been stalled since the arrest of CIA operative Raymond Davis and subsequent events such as drone attacks and the unilateral US operation killing Al Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden.
John Kerry, who heads the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, extracted these promises from the Pakistani leadership; he warned them that “if the relationship is to fall apart …. US will always reserve the right to protect its national security”.
Senator Kerry’s tough love message was reinforced, Dawn has learnt, by the telephone calls Secretary Clinton made to President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani.
Ms Clinton rang up Mr Gilani when he, the president and Chief of the Army Staff General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani were meeting Senator Kerry. The call is reported to have lasted about 20 minutes.
The secretary of state had called Mr Zardari on Sunday.
“I think we made serious progress. Pakistan has agreed to do a number of things immediately to demonstrate its further seriousness of purpose and we agreed to have several officials from the US to come here in the middle of the week or sometime soon to carry on this discussion and prepare the ground for Secretary Clinton,” a visibly fatigued Kerry told a selected group of journalists after his meetings with Pakistani civil and military leaders.

Having met the army chief on Sunday night, Mr Kerry spent most of Monday in meetings. As he noted: “We worked harder today to talk about ways in which we can be better partners, work cooperatively and open doors to joint cooperation to fight terrorism.”
Senator Kerry met President Zardari, Prime Minister Gilani and Army Chief Gen Kayani, individually and collectively, before a joint declaration was issued by the two sides expressing the willingness to carry on with their relationship.
“In furtherance of its existing commitment to fight terrorism, Pakistan has agreed to take several immediate steps to underscore its seriousness in renewing the full cooperative effort with the United States,” the joint communiqué said.
Senator Kerry avoided divulging details of the steps agreed upon, but vaguely described it as including cooperation on counter-terrorism, intelligence sharing and targeting terrorist sanctuaries. The latter is hardly surprising; having been high on the American wish list for a long time, action against the havens in tribal areas was one of the major demands Mr Kerry brought to Islamabad.
He said: “We need Pakistan’s cooperation, we need Pakistan’s help against sanctuaries in this country from where people are destabilising Afghanistan and frankly killing … all of (those who) are trying to provide for a stable Afghanistan.”

However, he stopped of claiming that Pakistani leaders had agreed to go after the Haqqani network, one of the core contentious issues in the rocky bilateral ties. He was only willing to say cryptically that both countries had agreed to target “some entity, which is engaged in terrorism … the entity that needs to be taken on one way or the other”.
He also said that other measures to be taken by Pakistan included returning the tail of the helicopter which was left behind by the Navy Seals during the Abbotabad raid.
After it malfunctioned, the Americans exploded the helicopter before they left; this was done, it was reported, to prevent the stealth technology from falling into Pakistani, and possibly other, hands.
However, distrust is still not a thing of the past. Despite Pakistan’s new commitments, which Mr Kerry himself described as “more detailed, more precise and clarified”, he made it clear that Washington was no longer going to be satisfied by mere promises.
“This road ahead will not be defined by words. It will be defined by actions,” he told journalists.
This is why Washington is going to follow a step-by-step approach before confirming that Secretary Clinton will be taking a flight to Islamabad.
Two US officials — Special Envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan Marc Grossman and CIA Deputy Director Mark Morrel — will visit Islamabad to follow up on Mr Kerry’s talks and discuss the agreed measures in details and possibly gauge progress on the commitments made to the senator.
Secretary Clinton’s visit remains contingent on the outcome of Grossman’s discussions. “First a meeting will take place to try to lay the groundwork for that (Clinton’s meeting) and coming out of that meeting the secretary would set the date,” Senator Kerry said. However, in the midst of all the tough talk and the conditions he set, Mr Kerry also made an effort to soothe ruffled feathers, “we are committed to working together with Pakistan — not unilaterally, but together in joint efforts” — contingent once again on Pakistani cooperation.
“But, if we are cooperating and working together there is no reason (for acting unilaterally),” he said.

Israel-Palestinian violence erupts on three borders

JERUSALEM: Israeli troops shot Palestinian protesters who surged towards its frontiers with Syria, Lebanon and Gaza on Sunday, killing at least 13 people on the day Palestinians mourn the establishment of Israel in 1948.
Policemen detain a Palestinian refugee during a demonstration in Karama, west of the Jordanian capital Amman and near the Jordanian-Israeli border.


In the deadliest such confrontation in years of anniversary clashes usually confined to the West Bank and Gaza, Israeli forces opened fire in three separate border locations to prevent crowds of demonstrators from crossing frontier lines.
The new challenge to Israel came from the borders of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Gaza — all home to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who fled or were driven out in 1948.
Combined with a public relations disaster last year over the killing of pro-Palestinian activists in a Gaza aid flotilla and a determined Palestinian diplomatic drive to win UN recognition of statehood in September this year, the bloody border protests raised the stakes further for Israel.
Israel’s leaders condemned the incidents as provocations inspired by Iran, to exploit Palestinian nationalist feeling fuelled by the popular revolts of the “Arab Spring”, and to draw attention from major internal unrest in Syria, Iran’s ally.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he hoped the confrontations would not escalate.
“We hope the calm and quiet will quickly return. But let nobody be misled: we are determined to defend our borders and sovereignty,” Netanyahu said.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, whose Fatah movement holds sway in the Israeli occupied West Bank and is ready to negotiate peace with Israel, said in a televised address that those killed were martyrs to the Palestinian cause.
“Their precious blood will not be wasted. It was spilt for the sake of our nation’s freedom,” Abbas said.
Hamas Praises Clashes
But extremist Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip and which last month sealed a surprise reconciliation pact with its bitter rival Fatah, issued a warning that Palestinians would accept nothing less than return to all lands lost in 1948.
Spokesman Taher Al-Nono praised the “crowds we have seen in Palestine, Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon” as evidence of “imminent victory and return to the original homes as promised by God”.
In an apparent contradiction of suggestions that Hamas might ditch its rejection of Israel’s right to exist, he said there was no alternative to recovering all land lost in 1948.
Israeli security forces had been on alert for violence on Sunday, the day Palestinians mourn the “Nakba”, or catastrophe, of Israel’s founding in a 1948 war, when hundreds of thousands of their brethren fled or were forced to leave their homes.
A call had gone out on Facebook urging Palestinians to demonstrate on Israel’s borders.
Lebanon’s army said 10 Palestinians died as Israeli forces shot at rock-throwing protesters to prevent them from entering the Jewish State from Lebanese territory.
They said 112 people had been wounded in the shooting incident in the Lebanese border village of Maroun al-Ras.
“The protesters overcame the Lebanese army and marched towards the security fence and started throwing stones,” Reuters cameraman Ezzat Baltaji said, from Maroun al-Ras village.
Syrian media reports said Israeli gunfire killed two people after dozens of Palestinians infiltrated the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights from Syria, along a front line that has been largely tranquil for decades.
Syria condemned Israel’s “criminal activities”.
“This appears to be a cynical and transparent act by the Syrian leadership to deliberately create a crisis on the border so as to distract attention from the very real problems that regime is facing at home,” said a senior Israeli government official, who declined to be named.
“Syria is a police state. People don’t randomly approach the border without the approval of the regime.”
On Sunday, hundreds of protesters flooded the lush green valley that marks the border area, waving Palestinian flags.
Israeli troops attempted to mend the breached fence, firing at what the army described as infiltrators.
“We are seeing here an Iranian provocation, on both the Syrian and the Lebanese frontiers, to try to exploit the Nakba day commemorations,” said the army’s chief spokesman, Brigadier-General Yoav Mordechai.
Syria is home to 470,000 Palestinian refugees and its leadership, now facing fierce internal unrest, had in previous years prevented protesters from reaching the frontier area.
To the southeast, on Jordan’s desert border with Israel, Jordanian police fired teargas to disperse hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists gathered at a border village.
Israeli forces did not fire over the Jordanian border.
On Israel’s tense border with Gaza, Israeli gunfire wounded 82 demonstrators nearing the fence, medics said. Israeli forces said they shot a man trying to plant a bomb near the border.
In Tel Aviv, Israel’s commercial hub, a truck driven by an Arab Israeli slammed into vehicles and pedestrians, killing one man and injuring 17 people.

IMF chief vows to fight charges

NEW YORK: IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn vowed Sunday to fight charges of assaulting a hotel chambermaid, amid an explosive sex scandalwhich could bury his dreams of becoming the next French president.
A handcuffed IMF chief, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, facing charges he sexually assaulted a hotel maid, is escorted from a New York Police Department unit.


The veteran French politician, who was arrested over the weekend after a New York chambermaid accused him of sexual assault, would defend himself against the allegations, lawyer Benjamin Brafman told reporters.
“He intends to vigorously defend these charges and denies any wrongdoing,” Brafman said outside the courthouse where the IMF chief will appear on Monday.
Strauss-Kahn left a police station in Harlem late Sunday in handcuffs.
The bombshell news of his arrest has left the International Monetary Fund reeling, coming ahead of critical talks on repairing the painful fallout of the debt crisis sweeping the euro zone.
Strauss-Kahn, 62, has hired a barrage of top lawyers, as questions also swirled over whether he had the right to diplomatic immunity.
Another lawyer William Taylor told journalists outside the Manhattan court house that “we’ve agreed to postpone the arraignment until tomorrow (Monday) morning.”
Taylor said the delay was linked to Strauss-Kahn undergoing further testing by police searching for evidence.
“Our client willingly consented to a scientific and forensic examination,” Taylor said, adding the IMF chief was “tired but he’s fine.” Strauss-Kahn was yanked off an Air France flight on Saturday just minutes before take-off in a humiliating turn of events for one of the world’s most powerful men.
A former French finance minister, he had been expected to throw his hat into the ring for the 2012 French election, challenging President Nicolas Sarkozy.
Strauss-Kahn has been charged with a “criminal sexual act, unlawful imprisonment, and attempted rape” of a 32-year-old woman.
The woman, employed for the past three years at the luxury Sofitel hotel near Times Square, picked Strauss-Kahn out of a line-up Sunday, as police said they had won a warrant to seek DNA evidence on his clothes.
The woman alleged he had assaulted her in his suite when he got out of his shower naked.
“She was in the room. She thought it was empty. That’s when he approached her from behind and touched her inappropriately. He forced her to perform a sexual act on him,” a police spokesman told AFP.
He described the victim as “female, black, 32 years old,” but could not confirm details given in the New York Times that the IMF chief pulled her into the bedroom and onto the bed and then locked the door.
She managed to fight him off, but he dragged her down the hallway to the bathroom, where he sexually assaulted her a second time, the daily said.
MSNBC television said that in the bathroom, Strauss-Kahn forced the maid to perform oral sex on him and tried to remove her underwear.
Strauss-Kahn’s wife, high-profile French television journalist Anne Sinclair, said however she did not believe the allegations against her husband, telling AFP: “I have no doubt his innocence will be established.”
Strauss-Kahn, who has been widely praised for his stewardship of the IMF, is so well known in France he is often referred to simply by his initials DSK.
Even though he has not yet officially declared his candidacy in next year’s French president elections, he had been topping the opinion polls.
News of his arrest threw the Socialist party into disarray, and could prove a boost for Sarkozy and his rightwing UMP which is also facing a challenge from the far-right National Front and its leader Marine Le Pen.
Conspiracy theories immediately began circulating in France speculating that the events were just an elaborate set-up to discredit Strauss-Kahn.
Police confirmed the IMF boss had been tracked down to the Air France flight when he contacted the Sofitel to ask staff to return his mobile phone which he had left behind in his room.
The arrest comes as the 187-member IMF is seeking to aid debt-ridden countries in the euro zone, and the executive board was now due to meet to discuss the crisis on Monday.
Strauss-Kahn, whose stint at the IMF does not officially end until September 2012, had been due to meet with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin on Sunday to discuss an aid package for debt-laden Greece.
He was then to attend a meeting of EU finance ministers on Monday and Tuesday in Brussels. The IMF said his number two John Lipsky would stand in as acting IMF chief for now.
It is not the first time that Strauss-Kahn has been tainted by scandal.
In 2008, he was discovered to be having an affair with a Hungarian IMF economist, but the IMF concluded he had not exerted pressure on the woman, although it noted his inappropriate behavior.