French pimping trial moves closer to Strauss-Kahn

A former prostitute told a French court Monday she was handpicked to take part in a sex party with Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a day before the ex-IMF chief was to take the stand in an explosive pimping trial.
The alleged role of the disgraced 65-year-old economist in an vice ring only officially comes under the spotlight on Tuesday, but references to his involvement have seeped out as the court painstakingly weaves together the different threads of the case.
Strauss-Kahn, whose high-flying career and presidential prospects were torpedoed when a New York hotel maid accused him of sexual assault in 2011, finds himself back in the dock in the northern French city of Lille on charges of "aggravated pimping".
Fourteen people in total are facing the charge, in a trial involving interlocking cases of well-connected friends accused of introducing each other to prostitutes, and procuring prostitutes for sex parties.
Strauss-Kahn, the most high-profile protagonist, admits to attending orgies organised by his entourage, but denies knowing the women lavishing their attention on him were prostitutes.
The prosecution is seeking to prove the parties were organised at his behest, and that he asked his friends to bring prostitutes to the soirees held in Paris, Brussels and Washington.
Prostitution is legal in France but procuring -- the legal term for pimping which includes encouraging, benefiting from or organising prostitution -- is a crime.
Strauss-Kahn faces 10 years in prison and a fine of up to 1.5 million euros ($1.7 million) if convicted.
- 'Professional parties' -
One of the former prostitutes Strauss-Kahn will face in court this week, Mounia, said Monday she was specifically chosen by one of the businessmen who threw the parties, David Roquet.
"The sexual relation that you were to have was with Dominique Strauss-Kahn?" asked Bernard Lemaire, the chief of the four judges overseeing the three-week jury-less trial.
"Yes," said Mounia. Roquet "told me he came to see if I would please this man."
Roquet, who is also charged with writing off the sex parties as company expenses, said he was hoping to benefit from his ties to a man then tipped to become France's next president.
"To me the goal was professional. So I would say these were professional parties," said Roquet, who has backed Strauss-Kahn's defence that he did not know the women were paid.
- The Carlton link -
Roquet says the prostitutes were told of "the presence of a well-known politician and they must be discreet."
Mounia and another prostitute, "Jade", are expected to testify that Strauss-Kahn would be "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 the New York scandal which 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" with testimony from the alleged ringleaders, hotel publicist Rene Kojfer and brothel owner Dominique Alderweireld who is known as "Dodo the Pimp", and the prostitutes who worked for them.
While Strauss-Kahn says he never set foot in the Carlton, and denies knowing the two men, it is they who allegedly provided prostitutes to his entourage who threw the sex parties for him.
Strauss-Kahn attended the first day of trial -- luring some 300 journalists to an otherwise run-of-the-mill court case -- but his name had not directly come up since, as French court rules forbid defendants from mentioning anyone not in the room.
However the court moved closer to Strauss-Kahn in the second week of the trial, as it began to link the Carlton ring to his entourage -- Roquet, another businessman and a former police commissioner.
All three will be in court with Strauss-Kahn on Tuesday.