from Switzerland to the United States and is now a free man, Swiss authorities
said yesterday, rejecting a US extradition request and drawing protests from
Washington.
Bern that all measures restricting Polanski’s movement were lifted, and he was
free to go anywhere he wished.
reason for the decision lies in the fact that it was not possible to exclude
with the necessary certainty a fault in the US extradition request.”
Frederic Mitterrand, who said he was “delighted for (Polanski’s wife, actress)
Emmanuelle Seigner, his children and his friends, who supported him with dignity
and determination.”
sex-crime conviction for having relations with an under-age girl in 1977.
intercourse with then 13-year-old Samantha Geimer.
United States was disappointed but would weigh its options in how to proceed
legally against Polanski.
adult. This is not a matter of technicality.”
days already served constituted his entire sentence, after the US Department of
Justice in May rejected their request to see certain records.
not possible to exclude with the necessary certainty that Roman Polanski has
already served the sentence he was condemned to at the time, and that the
extradition request is undermined by a serious fault.”
long-standing US warrant and has since been held under house arrest in Gstaad,
outside Bern.
been regularly staying in Switzerland.
Nonetheless, the US authorities did not
file any formal extradition request for years,” the statement from her office
noted.
in Zurich in September 2009 if he had not trusted that the journey would not
entail any legal disadvantages for him,” the statement concluded and rejected
the US request for extradition.”
that the ordeal had been like the script to a “horror film.”
said Fibak, a former tennis star.
could make” and that Polanski would now go straight back to work.
more recently The Ghost, has been dodging extradition to the US for decades.
In
recent months, he also attempted, but failed, to be sentenced in absentia.
based himself mainly in Europe because of the outstanding warrants against him.
