Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the leader of the International Monetary Fund, spent much of Sunday at the Manhattan Special Victims Unit in East Harlem as prosecutors sought additional evidence, including possible DNA evidence on his skin or beneath his fingernails, to bolster allegations that he had sexually assaulted a maid in a $3,000-a-night suite at a Midtown hotel, officials said.
The long wait for Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s arraignment unfolded as an international corps of reporters, photographers and camera crews were deployed both uptown and in Manhattan Criminal Court, and while new details emerged on how Mr. Strauss-Kahn came to be taken off an Air France plane at Kennedy International Airport moments before it was to take off for Paris on Saturday afternoon.
The authorities said they had moved to obtain a court order granting them a search warrant to examine Mr. Strauss-Kahn for signs of injury that he might have suffered during a struggle or for traces of his accuser’s DNA.
“Things like getting things from under the fingernails,” a law enforcement official said, “the classic things you get in association with a sex assault.”
The official, who asked not to be named because the investigation was continuing, added that since there was a high likelihood that Mr. Strauss-Kahn would be allowed to post bail, investigators feared that he might leave the country with whatever clues his body might provide.
As the court order was being sought, the woman who told the police on Saturday that she had been attacked by Mr. Strauss-Kahn, picked him from a police lineup on Sunday, the police said.
The identification came less than a day after he had been taken into custody by detectives of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey in the first-class section of the Air France jet. He was turned over to detectives from the Midtown South Precinct and later taken to the Special Victims Unit.
After identifying Mr. Strauss-Kahn about 4:30 p.m., the woman, a maid at the Sofitel New York on West 44th Street, where Mr. Strauss-Kahn was a guest, left the Special Victims Unit in a police van that drove past a gaggle of reporters. A blanket was covering her head.
Mr. Strauss-Kahn himself remained at the Special Victims Unit, near the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Bridge, well into the evening, and it was unclear when he would be taken to Manhattan Criminal Court for arraignment.
At a courtroom downtown, crowds of reporters kept watch throughout the day for Mr. Strauss-Kahn, sitting through dozens of more prosaic cases involving offenses like subway fare jumping, marijuana possession and, in one instance, charges of possession of a stun gun.
Reporters began arriving at the courthouse in the morning and their numbers increased as the day went on. By the time the night court session broke for dinner at 9, more than 60 reporters — many working for French newspapers, television stations and wire services — had assembled and were taking up most of the space on the long wooden benches that lined the rear of the courtroom.
Ira Judelson, a bail bondsman involved in the case, said the Manhattan district attorney’s office was expected to ask that Mr. Strauss-Kahn remain in custody at least until Monday, when a comprehensive bail package would be worked out that would outline specifics of where Mr. Strauss-Kahn would stay. He said the bail amount could be millions of dollars.
Benjamin Brafman, a prominent New York defense lawyer who has represented the hip-hop impresario Sean Combs, the Manhattan jeweler Jacob Arabov and Plaxico Burress, the New York Giants wide receiver, said that he was representing Mr. Strauss-Kahn and that he would plead not guilty. He had no further comment on Sunday.
The police have provided few details about the woman at the center of the case beyond saying she was 32 and an African immigrant.
According to the law enforcement official, the woman entered Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s suite early Saturday afternoon by saying “housekeeping.” She heard no answer. She left the door open behind her, as is hotel policy.
She went to the bedroom and saw a man rush from the bathroom to the bedroom, naked. She apologized, the law enforcement official said, and tried to leave.
But according to the official, the man ran after her, grabbed her and shut the door, locking it. He then pulled her toward the bedroom, the official said, and tried to attack her there.
He pulled her to the bathroom, the offiical added, and forced her to perform oral sex. The police said the woman eventually escaped from the suite and reported the attack to other hotel personnel, who called 911.
But when the police arrived, Mr. Strauss-Kahn was not there.
The police soon learned that Mr. Strauss-Kahn was at Kennedy Airport.
He thought he had left his cellphone in his hotel room and began making inquiries to get it back, according to the law enforcement official. The official said that Mr. Strauss-Kahn had not actually left the telephone there — earlier police reports said he had — but that when he made the inquiries to get the phone, a hotel security official told him, on instructions from police detectives, that it was at the hotel, and asked Mr. Strauss-Kahn where he was; from that call, the police determined he was at the airport.
At the Sofitel New York, another maid, who refused to give her name, described the woman who had made the accusation against Mr. Strauss-Kahn as a friendly person with a family. “In the world, she is a good person,” she said.
The maid added that her superiors had asked other hotel employees not to question the woman about the matter.
“The office said, ‘Don’t ask too much because she is sad,’ ” the maid said. “Just give her a hug when she comes back.”
A guest at the hotel, Mortem Meier, 36, a sales director visiting from Norway, said the livery driver who drove Mr. Strauss-Kahn to Kennedy Airport was also his driver on Saturday night.
“He said Strauss-Kahn was in a huge hurry,” Mr. Meier recalled. “He wanted to leave as soon as possible. He looked upset and stressed, the driver said.”
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