Former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn arrives to attend his trial in Lille, northern France, on Tuesday. Three topless women from the protest group Femen jumped on the car of Dominique Strauss-Kahn as the former IMF chief arrived to testify at his trial for "aggravated pimping."
AFP/Lille, France
Former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn denied committing any crime on Tuesday as he took the stand in a French court where he is accused of "aggravated pimping" for his alleged role in a prostitution ring.
"I committed no crime, no offence," he said in a letter read out to the court in the northern city of Lille. He also denied any "wild activity" and said the sex parties he attended were few and far between.
Earlier, topless Femen activists jumped on the roof of Strauss-Kahn's car as the 65-year-old arrived at the austere courthouse in Lille, one of them with "pimps, clients, guilty" scrawled across her chest.
The presence of the silver-haired economist, the most high-profile of the 14 accused in the three-week trial, also drew crowds of journalists and curious onlookers to the court.
Strauss-Kahn will have three days to fend off accusations that he organised for prostitutes to attend sex parties with him in Paris, Brussels and Washington in the case which could land him in prison for up to 10 years.
He will come face-to-face with two of these women, now retired sex workers, during questioning.
The former finance minister, known as DSK in France, is expected to argue he is merely a libertine who engaged in orgies with consenting adults and did not know the women lavishing their attention on him were prostitutes.
Until Tuesday, Strauss-Kahn had attended only the first day of the trial but his name has only been mentioned in passing by the judge, as French court rules forbid defendants from mentioning anyone not in the room.
An ex-prostitute, Mounia, said on Monday she was specifically chosen for DSK by one of the businessmen who threw parties for him.
Mounia and another prostitute, known as "Jade", are expected to testify that Strauss-Kahn would have been "naive" to have not realised they were professionals.
The trial is the latest in a series of cases offering a peek behind the bedroom door of a man once tipped as a potential challenger to former French president Nicolas Sarkozy.
France was stunned when it saw Strauss-Kahn paraded handcuffed in front of the world's cameras after a New York hotel maid accused him of sexual assault in May 2011 - a case that was eventually settled in a civil suit.
Just six months later, his name cropped up in an investigation into an alleged vice ring in which the managers and publicist of the luxury Carlton hotel in Lille organised lunchtime sex parties with prostitutes for their friends.
The first section of the trial focused on the so-called "Carlton Affair".