Polanski efforts 'for decades'
2009-09-29 10:16
Los Angeles - With Roman Polanski under arrest in Switzerland, American prosecutors Monday disputed a claim by the director that they had never tried to nab him after he fled overseas to escape sentencing on charges he had sex with an underage girl.
The Los Angeles County district attorney's office said it had multiple contacts with several countries in efforts to arrest the Academy Award-winning filmmaker, including once with Israel as recently as 2007.
Polanski's arrest in Switzerland on Saturday sparked an international outcry from prominent European supporters and drew questions about why American authorities chose to act now even though Polanski has been living and working openly in Europe for decades.
Misconduct?
In a statement, authorities challenged recent court filings by Polanski's lawyers that suggested he had not been arrested because doing so could draw attention to alleged misconduct by prosecutors.
"The District Attorney's Office in the 30 years since Mr. Polanski left the jurisdiction, has not once sought to have him extradited," the attorneys wrote in a July filing. "If it had, there would have been a hearing regarding the misconduct in this case."
Jean Rosenbluth, a University of Southern California law professor and a former federal prosecutor, said Polanski's allegations "probably brought him back onto the prosecutor's radar screen. The only way to resolve this is to have Mr. Polanski come back here".
"Prosecutors are people too. If you thumb your nose at them, they might thumb their nose back," she said.
She questioned prosecutors' decision to discuss the steps they took.
Not 'trying very hard'
"I think it's a lose-lose situation," she said. "When the public sees gaps of years between instances, I don't think the public will feel they were trying that hard."
Polanski's agent, Jeff Berg, said he was aware of no efforts to arrest Polanski before Saturday.
The timing of the director's arrest "certainly appears unusual," Berg said, especially since Polanski spent the summer at his house in Switzerland.
Polanski, who has been shooting The Ghost in Germany for the past six months, was in plain sight, Berg added.
"How hard would it be to find someone shooting a major film in a European country?" Berg asked. "He travels with transparency across Europe. It makes no sense."
The director had pleaded guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse in 1977 with a 13-year-old girl while photographing her during a modelling session.
Fled to France
He was sent to prison for 42 days but then the judge tried to renege on the plea bargain. On the day of his sentencing in 1978, aware the judge would sentence him to more prison time, Polanski fled to France.
Prosecutors released a list of their efforts to nab Polanski after he left the United States. Those efforts included requesting arrest warrants in England, Thailand, France and Israel since 1978.
Polanski has been the subject of an Interpol "red notice" for years, said Chief Inspector Thomas Hession of the US Marshals Service, which has a Los Angeles-based task force that requested the Polanski warrant last week.
The notice from the international police agency tells other countries that the person is wanted for a specific crime, and that the US is willing to seek that person's extradition if the suspect is caught.
In a February 2005 deposition, Deputy District Attorney Richard Doyle, one of three Los Angeles prosecutors who has handled the director's case, said he believed Polanski knew how to evade arrest.
"He knows where he can go. He knows where he can't go," Doyle said. "He's been a careful man all these years."
Several months behind bars
Polanski seems most likely to spend several months in detention, unless he agrees to forgo any challenge to his extradition to the United States. Under a 1990 accord between Switzerland and the US, Washington has 60 days to submit a formal request for his transfer.
Rulings in a similar dispute four years ago over Russia's former atomic energy minister Yevgeny Adamov confirmed that subjects should be held in custody throughout the procedure. Adamov's extradition to Russia took seven months.
The US request for Polanski's transfer must first be examined by the Swiss Justice Ministry, and once approved it can be appealed at a number of courts.
For now, Polanski is living in a Zurich cell where he receives three meals a day and is allowed outside for one hour of daily exercise.
Rebecca de Silva, spokesperson for the Zurich prison authorities, refused to say exactly where Polanski was being held for security reasons. She said family and friends can only see Polanski for an hour each week, but that does not include official visits from lawyers and consular diplomats.
Polanski's victim, who is now an adult and married, has asked for the case to be dismissed. She cannot be forced to testify against the director.
- AP