Roman Polanski in 'good spirits' after arrest in Switzerland

Roman Polanski is in “good spirits” despite his arrest on a decades-old warrant relating to the rape of a 13-year-old girl in 1977, his agent said on Tuesday.

“His voice is strong … he’s very anxious to get this resolved and go home,” Jeff Berg told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

Berg said the film director’s arrest on a 1978 US warrant as he arrived in Switzerland from France was a surprise because he has had a house in the country for more than a decade.

“It is surprising because Roman, for the last 12, 15 years, has lived in Switzerland, he has a home, he travels there, he works there,” he said.

“His presence there is well-known as it is through much of Europe, so this came kind of as a shock given the fact that he was invited to Zurich to receive a lifetime achievement award.”

Polanski, the 76-year-old director of Chinatown and the Pianist had travelled to Switzerland to accept a lifetime achievement award at the Zurich film festival, the organisers of which expressed “great consternation and shock” at his detention.

He has hired the Swiss lawyer Lorenz Erni, of the Eschmann & Erni law firm, to fight any extradition charges.

His French lawyer, Georges Kiejman, told France-Inter radio it was “too early to know” whether Polanski would be extradited. “For now, we are trying to have the arrest warrant lifted in Zurich,” he said.

The Oscar-winning director Andrzej Wajda and other Polish film-makers today appealed to the US, Swiss and Polish authorities for the Paris-born Polanski to be freed.

Polanski has strong links with Poland, having moved to the country with his Jewish family when still a toddler shortly before World War II.

His mother died in a Nazi concentration camp, but he avoided capture and spent his youth in Poland before moving to the west.

In a letter posted on the website of Polish Filmmakers Association, the directors called on the US authorities to review the indictment in his 31-year-old case, asking the Polish government to help prevent any extradition.

Poland and France intend to make a joint appeal to Switzerland and the US to have Polanski released from his detention, the Polish foreign minister, Radek Sikorski, told the Polish PAP news agency.

Sikorski said he and his French counterpart, Bernard Kouchner, also planned to ask the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, to offer Polanski clemency.

The director has had French citizenship for many years and is married to the French singer and actor Emmanuelle Seigner.

He has spent much of his life in France since fleeing the US in 1978, but regularly visits countries without extradition treaties with Washington.

The French culture minister, Frederic Mitterrand, said he was “stunned” by news of Polanski’s arrest, adding that he and the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, wanted to see the director reunited swiftly with his family.

“[Mitterrand] profoundly regrets that a new ordeal is being inflicted on someone who has already known so many during his life,” a culture ministry statement said.

Polanski pleaded guilty to the assault in 1977 but jumped bail and fled the US the following year to avoid a lengthy jail sentence.

He has spent more than three decades in exile in Paris, refusing to return to the US even when he won an Oscar for the Pianist in 2002.

Zurich police said he had been detained at immigration in Zurich on Saturday night at the request of the US justice department and was in custody awaiting extradition.

“There was a valid arrest request and we knew when he was coming,” Guido Balmer, of the Swiss justice ministry, said. “That’s why he was taken into custody.”

The director was permitted to make one call to his wife, who left their two young children to travel to Switzerland, the British writer Robert Harris, who has been working with Polanski, said.

“This is a high-profile action designed to send out some sort of message to someone somewhere,” he added. “No one condones what happened in the 70s, but I think this is pretty appalling.”

A statement from the Swiss Association of Directors called it a “grotesque judicial farce and a monstrous cultural scandal”, while the country’s Association of Film Directors and Scriptwriters said it was “a slap in the face for the entire cultural community in Switzerland”.

Polanski was 44 and already a twice Oscar-nominated director when he had sex with Samantha Gailey, a 13-year-old model he had hired for a photoshoot, at Jack Nicholson’s house in Los Angeles in March 1977.

He claimed the sex was consensual, saying the girl was “not unresponsive”, but Gailey said he had drugged her with painkillers and champagne before carrying out a “very scary” assault.

In recent months, Polanski’s lawyers have been seeking, through the US courts, to have the rape charges against him dropped after saying new evidence had emerged in a documentary that showed he was a victim of “judicial misconduct” at his original trial.

The film showed a former Los Angeles deputy district attorney admitting discussing the case with the trial judge while it was ongoing.

In February, a Los Angeles judge agreed that “substantial … misconduct” had taken place during the original court proceedings, but said he could not drop the charges so long as Polanski remained a fugitive.

The director has since appealed against the ruling, insisting he would not voluntarily return to the US even to clear his name.

Gailey, now called Samantha Geimer, has spoken in support of his attempt to have the charges dismissed, accusing the district attorney’s office of resurrecting “lurid details” of her assault to distract attention from its own wrongdoing.

“True as they may be, the continued publication of those details causes harm to me,” she said. “I have survived, indeed prevailed against, whatever harm Mr Polanski may have caused me as a child.” – guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media 2009