Defiant Polanksi vows to fight US extradition bid
The international tug-of-war over the 76-year-old Polish-born film director escalated as France and Poland urged Switzerland to free him on bail and pressed US officials all the way up to secretary of state Hillary Clinton on the case.
Polanski, who has dual French-Polish citizenship, was in his third day ofdetention after policearrested him on Saturday on an international warrant as he arrived in Zurich to receive a lifetime achievement award from a film festival.
Polanski has told Swiss officials that he will contest a US request that he be transferred to the US, his French lawyer Herve Temime said.
Temime said Polanski’s legal team would try to prove that the US request was illegal and that he should be released from Swiss custody.
Temime said he was able to speak with Polanski from his Zurich cell.
“He was shocked, dumbfounded, but he is in a fighting mood and he is very determined to defend himself,” Temime said.
A complicated legal process awaited all sides. While France expressed hope that Polanski would be freed shortly, Swiss officials said there would be no rash decision.
The Swiss Justice Ministry did not rule out the possibility that Polanski, director of classic films as Chinatown and Rosemary’s Baby, could be released on bail under strict conditions that he does not leave Switzerland.
Authorities in Los Angeles consider Polanski a “convicted felon and fugitive.”
French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner said he hoped Polanski could be quickly freed by the Swiss, calling the apprehension a “bit sinister”.
He said he and Polish counterpart Radek Sikorski wrote to Hillary Clinton about the case.
Polanski was “thrown to the lions,” said French culture minister Frederic Mitterrand. “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.”
Polanski at the time had pleaded guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with the 13-year-old and was sent to prison for 42 days of evaluation. Lawyers agreed that would be his full sentence, but the judge tried to renege on the plea bargain.
On the day of his sentencing in 1978, aware the judge would give him more prison time and require his voluntary deportation, Polanski fled to France.
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.
Polanski seems most likely to spend several months in jail unless he agrees to forgo any challenge to his extradition to the US.
The Justice Ministry insisted that politics played no role in its arrest order on Polanski, who lives in France but has spent much time at a chalet in the luxury Swiss resort of Gstaad. That has led to widespread speculation among his friends and even politicians in Switzerland that the country was coerced by Washington into action.
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
