Swiss arrest director Polanski over 1977 case

ZURICH, Switzerland - Director Roman Polanski was arrested by Swiss police yesterday as he flew in for the Zurich Film Festival and faces possible extradition to the United States for having sex in 1977 with a 13-year-old girl.

Polanski was scheduled to receive an honorary award at the festival when he was apprehended Saturday at the airport, the Swiss Justice Ministry said in a statement. It said U.S. authorities had sought the arrest of the 76-year-old director around the world since 2005.

"There was a valid arrest request, and we knew when he was coming," ministry spokesman Guido Balmer told the Associated Press. "That's why he was taken into custody."

Polanski, director of such classic films as Chinatown and Rosemary's Baby, fled the United States in 1978, a year after pleading guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with the underage girl.

Polanski has asked a U.S. appeals court in California to overturn a judge's refusal to throw out his case. He claims misconduct by the now-deceased judge who had arranged a plea bargain and then reneged on it.

His victim, Samantha Geimer, who long ago identified herself publicly, has joined in Polanski's bid for dismissal, saying she wants the case to be over. She sued Polanski and reached an undisclosed settlement.

Balmer, the Swiss spokesman, said the United States would now have to make a formal extradition request. A U.S. Justice Department spokeswoman in Washington declined to comment on the case yesterday.

Polanski's French attorney, Georges Kiejman, told France-Inter radio that it was "too early to know" if Polanski would be extradited.

"The proceedings must take their course," he said yesterday. "For now, we are trying to have the arrest warrant lifted in Zurich."

Kiejman later told the Associated Press that France does not extradite its citizens and that U.S. authorities had never asked France to prosecute Polanski at home.

Balmer said Polanski's arrest was not influenced by politics, even though the director has often traveled or stayed in the country.

The arrest of someone facing an international warrant is "automatic when you know when and at what time the individual is coming," Balmer said.

Switzerland joined Europe's passport-free area in 2008 and ended all passport checks in March on flights to and from the 24 other countries participating in the agreement. Even before then, it rarely closely monitored the identities of travelers from neighboring European countries entering Switzerland.

Balmer flatly rejected that the arrest was somehow aimed at winning favor with the United States after a series of bilateral spats over tax evasion and wealthy Americans stashing money at Swiss banking giant UBS AG.

"There is no link with any other issues in question," he told the Associated Press.

Earlier this year, Superior Court Judge Peter Espinoza in Los Angeles dismissed Polanski's bid to throw out the case because the director failed to appear in court to press his request, but said there was "substantial misconduct" in the handling of the original case.

In his ruling, Espinoza said he reviewed not only legal documents, but also watched the HBO documentary, Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, which suggests there was behind-the-scenes manipulations by a now-retired prosecutor who was not assigned to the case.

The Swiss statement said Polanski was in "provisional detention for extradition," but added he would not be transferred to U.S. authorities until all proceedings were completed.

Polanski has lived for the last three decades in France, where his career has continued to flourish, and he received a directing Oscar in absentia for the 2002 movie The Pianist. He is married to French actress Emmanuelle Seigner, with whom he has two children.

He has avoided traveling to countries likely to extradite him.

In Paris, Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand said he was "dumbfounded" by Polanski's arrest, adding that he "strongly regrets that a new ordeal is being inflicted on someone who has already experienced so many of them."

Those comments referred to the fact that Polanski, a native of France who was taken to Poland by his parents, escaped Krakow's Jewish ghetto as a child during World War II and lived off the charity of strangers. His mother died at the Nazis' Auschwitz death camp.

But his life was shattered again in 1969 when his wife, actress Sharon Tate, and four other people were gruesomely murdered in Los Angeles by followers of cult figure Charles Manson. Tate was eight months pregnant at the time.