'Leave me alone!' Strauss-Kahn pleads in interview

Disgraced former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn has pleaded to be left alone and says he is facing a "media assault" in an interview with French weekly Le Point. "I have never been convicted, not in (France) nor in any other country," he said in the interview, due to appear on Thursday. "Therefore nothing justifies my being the object of a media assault that some days resembles a manhunt." Strauss-Kahn, a one-time contender for the French presidency, suffered a stunning fall from grace following his arrest at a New York hotel on sexual assault charges last year and a subsequent string of sex-related investigations in France. In the interview he denounced the intense media scrutiny he has faced since returning to France after the US charges were dropped. "I can no longer tolerate that there is an assumed right to take advantage of my situation -- and the legal investigations wrongly targeting me -- to trample on my privacy," he said. "Leave me alone!" Strauss-Kahn is facing charges in France of "aggravated pimping in an organised gang" in connection with claims that he and associates arranged sex parties with prostitutes. Strauss-Kahn admits to attending orgies but says he was unaware the women were being paid. "The truth is that my friends organised the parties I attended. As there were prostitutes there, of course I'm accused of having formed a prostitution ring, making me a pimp -- it's as false as it is absurd," Strauss-Kahn said in the Le Point interview. Earlier this month a probe into Strauss-Kahn's alleged participation in a gang rape was dropped after the woman involved wrote to French police saying she had consented and was not pressing charges. The next hearing in the pimping case is due in November.