The lawyer for Tristane Banon, a young French novelist who claims to have been sexually assaulted by Dominique Strauss-Kahn in 2002, has reaffirmed that his client will not cooperate with the prosecution of Strauss-Kahn in the United States. On Wednesday, Banon’s lawyer, David Koubbi, told the French news channel BFM, “There are obviously two cases and each case should be treated in isolation, according to the laws of the country in question.” Strauss-Kahn, the former head of the IMF, is accused of having sexually assaulted a chamber maid at the Sofitel hotel in New York on May 14…

Earlier, in a May 20 interview with BFM, Koubbi had already flagged his client’s unwillingness to aid the American prosecution of Strauss-Kahn. “Neither Tristane Banon nor I myself want to be used [instrumentalisé] by the American judiciary or to provide any cooperation whatsoever such that these two cases become connected in one way or another. It is completely out of the question in the case of Tristane Banon that an action on our part results in Dominique Strauss-Kahn being found guilty in the United States.”