Article: Swiss Reject U.S. Request to Extradite Polanski

The justice ministry of Switzerland said on Monday that it had denied a request to extradite the director Roman Polanski to the United States, where he has been a fugitive since 1978 after pleading guilty to having sex with a 13-year-old girl, and that he was no longer under house arrest.

In rejecting the extradition request from the United States, the Swiss ministry cited two factors: first, the Swiss said, the United States had failed to provide the records of a January hearing in Los Angeles County Superior Court that would have shown the judge in charge of the Polanski case in 1977 agreed that “the 42 days of detention spent by Roman Polanski in the psychiatric unit of a Californian prison represented the whole term of imprisonment he was condemned to.”

Second, the Swiss said, when Mr. Polanski traveled in September 2009 to the Zurich Film Festival where he was arrested as he arrived at the airport, he did so in “good faith” that “the journey would not entail any legal disadvantages for him.” The Swiss justice ministry noted that Mr. Polanski had been staying regularly in Switzerland since 2006, and that though “he was registered in the Swiss registry of wanted persons, he was never controlled by the Swiss authorities.”

In a statement, the ministry wrote:

The 76-year-old French-Polish film director Roman Polanski will not be extradited to the USA. The freedom-restricting measures against him have been revoked. This announcement was made by Mrs. Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf, head of the Swiss Federal Department of Justice and Police, in Berne on Monday. The reason for the decision lies in the fact that it was not possible to exclude with the necessary certainty a fault in the U.S. extradition request, although the issue was thoroughly examined. Moreover, also the principles of State action deriving from international public order were taken into account.

At the end of 2005 the U.S. authorities issued an international search warrant against Roman Polanski due to sexual offense against a minor committed in 1977. On the basis of this international order of arrest, Roman Polanski was arrested on 26th September 2009 upon his arrival at the airport of Zurich and taken into provisional custody pending extradition. On 22nd October 2009 the US authorities filed a formal extradition request. On 4th December Roman Polanski was released from custody after depositing a 4.5 million franc bail and was granted house arrest under electronic monitoring in his chalet in Gstaad.

This is a developing story.