Shadow of Polanski hangs over Strauss-Kahn

Is Dominique Strauss-Kahn paying for Roman Polanski's actions? The French press have begun to talk about 'L'ombre Polanski' - 'the shadow of Polanski' - as they ponder the incarceration of the IMF chief in Rikers Island, where the 63-year-old has reportedly been placed on 'suicide watch' following his arrest on charges of rape.

Film director Polanski famously fled America in 1978 while awaiting sentencing for having unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl. Many in France have noted that to the American legal system the cases will be undeniably linked - a middle-aged French man is arrested for a sex crime in the US and escapes justice - and the fear that Strauss-Kahn would do a 'Polanski' explained the decision to oppose bail.

"It's certainly playing an unconscious role in proceedings," admitted Georges Kiejman, who acted for Polanski after he was arrested in Switzerland in 2009 and almost extradited to the US.

"The fear of the American judge is that if Strauss-Kahn returns to French territory then he becomes impregnable" as French law doesn't permit the extradition of its nationals.

Herve Temime, another member of Polanski's legal team, also conceded that his client's actions were having an impact on the current case. "We can understand the parallel on factual and intellectual levels, and it is unfortunate and very regrettable." Kiejman noted that having taken Strauss-Kahn's passport, the American judges could be fairly certain that he would not leave the country.

57 per cent of French people now feel that Strauss-Kahn is the victim of a stitch-up - and that was before New York mayor Michael Bloomberg hit back at French critics who said police should not have allowed DSK to be photographed in handcuffs by saying: "If you don't want to do the perp walk, don't do the crime."

It's no wonder that some of the strongest defenders of Polanski are now rallying to the cause of their countryman.

Frederic Mitterand, culture minister and nephew of the former president Francois, hit out on Sunday night at what he say as the "lynching" of DSK.

And French philosopher Bernard Henri Levy, who inspired howls of American anger by claiming that at 76, and as a survivor of Nazism, Roman Polanski should not have been arrested in Switzerland, came out fighting on Monday for Strauss-Kahn, his friend of 20 years.

"Strauss-Kahn will remain my friend, bears no resemblance to this monster, this caveman, this insatiable, malevolent beast now being described," he said.

"Charming, seductive, yes, certainly; a friend to women and, first of all, to his own woman, naturally, but this brutal and violent individual, this wild animal, this primate, obviously no, it's absurd."

The fear for Strauss-Kahn's legal team, of course, is that the more the two cases become conflated in the American mind, the trickier their task will become. ·