And another character has emerged in the strange, depressing and unending Dominique Strauss-Kahn rape case. The Daily Beast has tracked down Amara Tarawally, 35, the imprisoned fiance of the Sofitel maid who claims to have been raped by the former IMF head. A taped conversation between the victim and Tarawally in which she is said to have assured him that she "knew what she was doing" helped put the case against DSK in jeopardy earlier this month.
"I know that he [Strauss-Kahn] did what he did” to the maid, Tarawally assured the Daily Beast yesterday. “She had no reason to lie.” But Tarawally, who is locked up for trying to buy 114 pounds of marijuana from a police informant in Arizona, has a few. Not least of which are a string a women he seems to have in addition to the victim. The website interviewed an Arizona woman, to whom he gave an engagement ring, and says he has a wife and child in New York.
Tarawally claims that neither he nor the maid knew who Strauss-Kahn was until after the incident. In fact, he says, "it was the police who talked about what a powerful man he was." And he also claims that the translation of his conversation with the maid was misunderstood. He says the maid said she knew what she was doing in regards to a police officer who had visited him. But that doesn't exactly match up with timelines for the conversation, which took place soon after the attack, and when the police figured out that Tarawally existed, which only happened recently.
From the way the Beast describes their conversations with Tarawally, who seems unable to keep his stories straight, it doesn't sound like the incarcerated man will be much help to either the prosecution or the defense. Yet another reason the first hearings have been delayed until August.
