Posted by Richard Head

Sunday September 27, 2009

Roman Polanski has been arrested in Switzerland.

The Oscar-winning director — who fled the United States in 1978 after pleading guilty to having sex with a 13-year-old girl in California — was held on his arrival in Switzerland Saturday, according to a statement from the Zurich Film Festival, where Polanski, 76, was due to receive a lifetime achievement award.

A U.S. warrant for his arrest was issued when Polanski left the country more than 30 years ago before his sentencing. Polanski, a French citizen, has never returned to the U.S. since then and has sought to have the case against him dismissed.

“There was a valid arrest request and we knew when he was coming,” ministry spokesman Guido Balmer told The Associated Press. “That’s why he was taken into custody.”

Polanski is said to be in “provisional detention for extradition,” but will not be transferred to U.S. authorities until all proceedings are completed. He has the right to contest his detention and any extradition decision in Swiss courts.

“Why now?,” a friend of Polanski’s said Sunday. “We don’t understand. Roman has been to Switzerland before so we don’t understand why he’s been arrested this time.”

Earlier this year, a California judge demanded Polanski return to the U.S. in order to formally apply for the case’s dismissal, but when he refused to appear in person for fear of being arrested as a fugitive, Superior Court Judge Peter Espinoza denied his request.

Polanski, who received a directing Oscar for The Pianist, is married to French actress Emanuelle Seigner, and has two children.

In 2005, he won a libel suit against Vanity Fair magazine over an article that accused him of propositioning a woman while on the way to the funeral of his murdered second wife, Sharon Tate, a victim of the 1969 Charles Manson killings.

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