Ex-IMF chief free on bail after a house-arrest delay

NEW YORK - Former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn was released from jail yesterday and will be held under house arrest near Ground Zero after plans for him to stay at a luxury apartment fell through because the neighbors objected to the media frenzy.

Prosecutors said he would be temporarily housed in a building on a small street in lower Manhattan within the Police Department's "Ring of Steel" - a network of private and police cameras near where the World Trade Center stood.

While he is there, his family and attorneys will look for a more permanent place for him to await trial on charges he had tried to rape a hotel maid.

The original plan was for Strauss-Kahn to move into a luxury residential hotel under armed guard on Manhattan's well-to-do Upper East Side. Even though the address was never officially released, police and reporters soon converged on the building, the Bristol Plaza.

"Last night there was an effort by the media to invade the building," Strauss-Kahn attorney William Taylor said. "That is why the tenants in the building will not accept his living there." While Strauss-Kahn's family had a lease and could have stayed, he decided to leave "out of respect for the residents."

Late in the day, after the snag over where the banker would serve his house arrest had been resolved, Strauss-Kahn was released from the city's Rikers Island jail on $1 million cash bail. The 62-year-old former managing director of the powerful International Monetary Fund had been behind bars since last Saturday.