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Roman Polanski Speaks: His New Movie, His 2. Arrest, and the Public Hatred He Encounters.

The French statesman Talleyrand’s advice to his diplomats, “Above all, not too much zeal,” would have been well observed in the Federal Office of Justice in Berne, Switzerland, one day in late September 2. That day, an official received a call from a police station in Zurich. As the Swiss journalist Daniel Binswanger reconstructed it, a duty officer had read in a newspaper that the Polish film director Roman Polanski was about to receive a lifetime- achievement award at the Zurich Film Festival. The newspaper also mentioned Polanski’s outstanding charge in the United States of unlawful sex with a minor 3. He put Polanski into the Interpol system, and bingo, there’s an international arrest warrant. So he does the right thing. He knows it’s not for them to decide; it has international implications, so he calls Berne.

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Now, in Berne they do an incredible thing. They ask Washington if they really want Polanski. And that’s where they created the disaster.” (The Swiss authorities maintain that Polanski’s arrest followed an extradition request from the U. S. Department of Justice.)Polanski, now 8. California in 1. 97. California Institution for Men, in Chino, for a 9.

Judge Laurence J. Rittenband would constitute his full punishment. When Polanski was released after 4. Before he could do so, Polanski, who had his passport and was not on bail, flew to his home in Paris. A bench warrant has been out for his arrest ever since. Because the judge had acted on a judicial promise when he sent him to Chino, Polanski was never officially sentenced, and that is the crux of the case. Threatened with disqualification for serial misconduct, Rittenband resigned from the case before he could sentence Polanski in absentia.

Polanski lives in France, as a French- born citizen, and by French law is exempt from extradition. This is not only one of the longest- running cases in California but also possibly a unique one in legal history, in which the prosecution, the defense, and the victim were all on the same side: against the judge.

There could have been no other country in Europe more vulnerable to political problems and sheer embarrassment if it arrested Polanski than Switzerland. But it had no choice. Nor did the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office have a choice, which it might well have wanted, since it had made no effort to initiate Polanski’s arrest for the 3. When Polanski was arrested getting off a plane at the Zurich Airport on September 2. Swiss were suddenly faced with explaining to France and Poland—of which Polanski is also a citizen—how their Ministry of Culture, which backed the film festival, had had no idea that their Ministry of Justice was plotting Polanski’s arrest, or why their Foreign Office knew nothing about it. Almost worse, in terms of Switzerland’s famed efficiency, was the fact that Polanski owned a house in Gstaad, the purchase of which had required clearance by the same justice department that was now handling his extradition.

He also had an account at the Swiss bank UBS and a Swiss- registered car, and he had been coming to Gstaad for 4. Because such a blunder couldn’t be imagined, some plausible conspiracies were put forward.

Was America putting pressure on Switzerland because of tax- avoiding accounts at UBS? The Los Angeles Times went with the story that Polanski’s lawyers had recently tried to get his case dismissed, having acquired new evidence of alleged prosecutorial misconduct in 1. Los Angeles County district attorney Steve Cooley was in the middle of an election campaign to become attorney general of California, and many people assumed that it was he who had chosen this moment to go after the fugitive director. Cooley vehemently denied this.

This is not the way we make decisions,” he told me.)On September 2. Nicholas Marsh, a U. S. Justice Department lawyer, e- mailed Diana Carbajal, a deputy district attorney in L. A., “This morning we received an urgent fax from the Swiss Federal Office of Justice notifying us that Polanski is expected to be in Zurich sometime in the next few days.

Because there is still an outstanding Red Notice on Polanski, the Swiss are urgently inquiring as to whether the U. S. will be submitting a PA [provisional arrest] request for Polanski.” Marsh added that, in view of “recent activity in the U. S. court case,” he wanted to know whether the D. A.’s office intended to proceed with the extradition or decline it and remove the Red Notice. The D. A. decided to proceed. The previous year, 2.

Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, co- written and directed by Marina Zenovich, had contained admissions of backroom communications between the judge and the prosecutors in the Polanski case. The apparent misconduct was considered serious enough to send Polanski’s lawyers back to court, for the first time since 1. Zenovich’s film was thought to be partly responsible for instigating Polanski’s arrest. And the “recent activity” referred to in Marsh’s e- mail had occurred eight weeks before the arrest, on July 3. Second District Court of Appeal ordered the lower court’s presiding judge to explain why he couldn’t have a hearing without Polanski “to determine whether the case should be dismissed in furtherance of justice.” It was the first victory for Polanski in the courts in 3.

D. A. wasn’t having any of it. Polanski’s lawyers had already offered a possible explanation for the contradictory behavior of the D. A.’s office and its inactivity over the years: “Despite feigning offense at Mr.

Polanski’s absence from California, the district attorney has never sought extradition or other relief, knowing, of course, that such relief would require litigation of the misconduct.”The D. A.’s office scrambled to prove that it had been on his trail. It took this long because he was a fugitive,” Steve Cooley told reporters.

Sandi Gibbons, spokesperson for the D. A.’s office, told ABC News that Polanski had been in this situation before, adding, “He hears that he might be arrested if he goes to another country, so he doesn’t go.” I read this quote to Polanski over the phone to ask if that was true. Absolutely not,” he replied. I was moving freely for 3.

In February 2. 00. Polanski’s lawyers had announced in open court, in front of his pursuer, L. A. deputy district attorney David Walgren, that Polanski would be filming in Germany (from where he was extraditable) for two and a half months. Watch Saving Banksy Online (2017).

Polanski had shot The Pianist there over a period of seven weeks in 2. He had also owned a house in Spain for 2. Venice Film Festival, and spent most of 1. Tunisia filming Pirates.

He was therefore hardly a fugitive. Even in a memo purporting to outline their efforts over the years, the D. A.’s office revealed just how little they had done to pursue Polanski, who went more or less unwatched and was not actively sought from 1. D. A.’s office put out the Red Notice—the first international arrest warrant in the entire 3. Cooley had barely lifted a finger to trigger Polanski’s arrest. As one lawyer told me, “It fell off a Christmas tree. What are they going to say?

Don’t arrest him’?”Under Arrest in Switzerland. Polanski was finally alone at four A. M., in a police cell in Zurich, shocked and exhausted from having worked all the previous day in Paris cutting his latest film, The Ghost Writer. In the following days he was moved twice, eventually into a large, monastery- like building with a view of a lake, where he could walk circles in a courtyard. He received visits from his wife, Emmanuelle Seigner, the Polish ambassador and the French consul, and his Swiss lawyer, Lorenz Erni. Finally he was sent to Winterthur Prison, where he stayed for some seven weeks.

What Polanski saw on TV in his cell made him think, he said, Now I’m really in trouble. Many of his supporters seemed to be communicating that he was a special case, that it was an outrage to arrest this great director.