By April MacIntyre Sep 27, 2009, 14:37 GMT
After 30 years of being a wanted man, giving drugs and alcohol to a 13-year-old girl and having unlawful sex with her at Jack Nicholson's Hollywood home, Roman Polanski was finally arrested.
(FILE) A file photo dated 23 February 2009 showing Polish-French director Roman Polanski during the shooting of his film 'The Ghost' in List on Sylt, Germany. The town List represents US holiday island Martha's Vineyard for Polanski's political thriller. Media reported on 27 September 2009 that Polanski was arrested the previous night in Zurich, Switzerland in relation to sex with a 13-year-old girl in 1978 and should be extradited to the US. Polanski was in Switzerland for the Zurich Film Festival where he had been due to receive a lifetime achievement prize later on 27 September 2009. EPA/GEORG SUPANZ
Oscar winning film director Polanski (The Pianist, 2003) was arrested in Switzerland on a 1978 U.S. arrest warrant for the unlawful sex act, according to ABC News.
Polanski, 76, was to appear at the Zurich Film Festival on Sunday evening for a retrospective of his film career, but was arrested on arrival at Zurich airport on Saturday night.
Polanski's publicist has not released a formal statement.
According to ABC, Zurich Cantonal Police spokesman Stefan Oberlin said Polanski's arrest was ordered from the Federal Justice Department in Berne.
Back in the seventies, Polanski spent 42 days in prison undergoing psychiatric tests but he fled the United States before being sentenced. He has lived in France and has avoided countries that have extradition treaties with the United States.
The life of Roman Polanski has been colored with unimaginable tragedy.
Born Raymond Polanski to Polish-Jewish parents on August 18, 1933, he spent the first three years of his life in Paris before the family returned to Poland. He escaped the Nazi holocaust in Poland thanks to his father. His mother later died in an Auschwitz gas chamber. His pregnant wife, actress Sharon Tate, and unborn child were slaughtered in Beverly Hills, California in 1969 by the Charles Manson Gang.
According to the Washington Post's 1977 news item regarding the crime, Nicholson was reportedly out of town at the time of the alleged crime. A spokesman for the district attorney's office told reporters that Polanski had met the girl's mother and arranged for the girl to pose for some photographs for the French edition of Vogue magazine.
He said Polanski took some pictures, some nude, of the girl that the mother objected to.
He said the mother became angry when she saw the picture and questioned her daughter when she returned home from the second photographic session Thursday night. Officers said the girl told her mother that Polanski had given her a tablet of the powerful tranquilizing drug Quaalude.
The director then raped the girl and forced her to commit various sex acts with him, police said.
The full AP report on the arrest is here.
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