WARSAW : Film director Roman Polanski was questioned by Polish prosecutors Thursday on a US arrest warrant for sex offences, but allowed to walk free. The maker of ‘The Pianist’ and ‘Chinatown’ has been sought by the American police since 1978 after he fled the country before he could be sentenced for having sex with a 13-year-old girl. Prosecutors in Krakow, southern Poland, released him after questioning, but justice authorities in Warsaw did not rule out extraditing him to the US. ‘Roman Polanski said he would comply with all requests made by prosecutors in this case and provided his address. Prosecutors therefore decided not to arrest him in connection with a possible US extradition request,’ Polish justice ministry spokesman Mateusz Martyniuk told AFP on Thursday.
The United States attempted to have him arrested for offences when he travelled to Warsaw for the opening of a Jewish museum, the Polish government confirmed Thursday.
The US asked the Polish prosector general to hold the Polish-born Polanski, 81, who also has French nationality, until he could be extradited. Martyniuk however told AFP Polanski’s extradition was still possible because ‘the statute of limitations does not apply to US requests’. In 2010, the Polish prosecutor general said Polanski could not be extradited because under Polish law too much time had passed since the offences.
Martyniuk said that since the US had not yet forwarded an extradition request, Polanski ‘is a free citizen and is free to travel’. Los Angeles police charged Polanski with six felony counts, including rape and sodomy, in 1977 before he accepted a plea deal.
But he absconded on the eve of sentencing the following year fearing that the judge planned to go back on the bargain. Police said he got the girl to pose for photos in actor Jack Nicholson’s Hollywood home after telling her mother, a model and actress, that they were for French Vogue. The teenager told a grand jury that Polanski plied her with champagne and drugs, and then had sex with her.
The director was in the southern Polish city of Krakow Thursday, and as it stands would be able to return to France, where he is directing a stage show called the ‘The Vampires’ Ball’. Polanski was arrested in 2009 in Zurich when he travelled to Switzerland to pick up a prize at a film festival after the United States made a similar request.