The Los Angeles Times is reporting that Oscar-winning director Roman Polanski was arrested today by Swiss authorities stemming from a 30-year-old conviction on charges of having sex with a minor.LA prosecutors planned Roman Polanski's arrest at the Zurich airport after learning he would be arriving there to accept a film festival award this week. Organizers of the festival expressed "great consternation and shock" upon hearing the news. On at least two previous occasions, the Los Angeles DA got word that Polanski had made travel arrangements to countries with extradition treaties with the U.S. and prepared paperwork for his arrest-- but on both occasions Polanski found out about the warrants and canceled his travel plans.
The Swiss Federal Justice Department was holding the 76-year-old director in provisional detention while preparations were made to possibly extradite him to Los Angeles to face that 1978 arrest warrant following his conviction of drugging and having unlawful sex with a 13-year-old minor in the home of Jack Nicholson. Facing a prison term, Polanski fled the United States just before his sentencing. But in the ensuing time, the girl, Samantha Geimer, has publicly forgiven him, and, with Hollywood's backing, lawyers have tried over the years to get the case dismissed as recently as last year, arguing among other things that he was psychologically shattered after his wife Sharon Tate was killed by the Manson family.
In Paris, where Polanski fled and now lives, the French culture minister Frederic Mitterrand said in a statement that he was “astonished” by the arrest.
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