France, Poland Want Polanski Released on Bail

Monday, September 28, 2009
by Natalie de Vallieres and Biodun Iginla, BBC News. Natalie des Vallieres reported from Los Angeles..

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Monday, September 28, 2009; 9:39 AM

LOS ANGELES, Sept. 28 -- The arrest of director Roman PolanskiRoman Polanski in Switzerland on charges of fleeing sentencing for unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl in Los Angeles pushed into the diplomatic realm a case that for 31 years existed, at least in America, chiefly in the dominion of celebrity and notoriety.

The French and Polish governments stepped into the case Monday, urging Switzerland to release the 76-year-old Polanski, who was arrested at the Zurich airport Saturday night by Swiss authorities acting at the request of the Los Angeles district attorney's office. Prosecutors there had learned of the Oscar-winning director's plans to attend a film festival in his honor, and passed a request through the U.S. Justice Department.

French Foreign Minister Bernard KouchnerFrench Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner called the arrest "a bit sinister" and told a French radio station that he and Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski have appealed to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham ClintonHillary Rodham Clinton to intervene. The Polish Filmmakers Association also called for the release of Polanski, who has dual Polish and French citizenship, and asked U.S. authorities to review the case.

The arrest outraged the government of France, which has declined to extradite Polanski since he fled the United States in 1978, after a Los Angeles judge signaled he would scotch a plea agreement in the sex case. In France, Polanski is revered both as a filmmaker and as a martyr to American injustice and puritanism.

Culture Minister Fr?d?ric Mitterrand issued a statement saying he "profoundly regrets that a new ordeal is being inflicted on someone who has already known so many during his life."

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Mitterrand also charged that Polanski was "thrown to the lions," the Associated Press reported. "In the same way that there is a generous America that we like, there is also a scary America that has just shown its face," he said.

Polanski, who was born in Paris, also received support from Poland, where he moved as a toddler and avoided capture by the Nazis, who put his mother to death in a concentration camp. Sikorski told Poland's PAP news agency Sunday that he was "considering approaching the American authorities over the possibility of the U.S. president proclaiming an act of clemency, which would settle the matter once and for all."

The arrest baffled some in Hollywood. "I think it's absolutely ridiculous," said Bill Flicker, a film editor who once worked with Polanski in France. "It's stupid and a waste of resources. I don't understand why they are doing it."

After winning acclaim for his films in Poland, Polanski wowed Hollywood with "Rosemary's Baby" and "Chinatown." He won the Best Director Oscar in 2003 for "The Pianist," set during the Holocaust.

Among the director's supporters on the American side was his victim, Samantha Geimer, who was 13 when Polanski took her to bed during a photo shoot in the home of his friend Jack NicholsonJack Nicholson. She said a decade ago that she felt no anger toward Polanski and most recently made her feelings known in "Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired," a 2008 HBO documentary that made the case for dismissing charges against him.

If Polanski challenges the extradition, the process could drag on for months, according to officials. Neither his attorney nor prosecutors returned calls Sunday.

When Polanski fled the United States in 1978, the facts of the case against him were no longer in dispute. He had pleaded guilty to having sex with an underage girl, and in exchange for that admission, the district attorney had agreed that he should be sentenced to the 42 days he'd spent undergoing psychiatric evaluation in a state prison.

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