Poland will not extradite Polański as no appeal lodged
PR dla Zagranicy
Nick Hodge
27.11.2015 11:14
Director Roman Polański will not be deported from Poland to the United States, as a Polish prosecutor's office has confirmed that it will not appeal against the October ruling of a Kraków court.
Roman Polanski. Image: Youtube
“The position of the prosecutor's office does not surprise me, as the reasoning of the local court essentially leaves no doubt as to the fact that these arguments were correct,” commented Jan Olszewski.
The District Court in Kraków ruled on 30 October that Polański should not be deported from Poland over an extradition request filed by the United States concerning a 1977 case of unlawful sex with a minor.
A wanted man
Polański fled the US in February 1978, shortly before being sentenced for unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl. He settled in Paris, where he has been chiefly based ever since.
In 2009, while entering Switzerland to receive a prize at the Zurich Film Festival, he was arrested, as a US request for his extradition had been freshly submitted. However, Swiss authorities ultimately backed down after keeping him under house arrest for several months (he has a villa in Gstaad).
The director returned to France, but he has frequently visited Poland, where he had grown up in a secular Jewish family in the city of Kraków.
Next film to be shot Poland?
In recent months, Polański had been laying the groundwork for his next feature film, which he hopes to make in Poland.
The movie will be an exploration of the Dreyfus Affair, a notorious miscarriage of justice concerning a French-Jewish officer, prior to World War I.
The screenplay is based on Robert Harris's novel 'An Officer and a Spy'. Polański has previously adapted Harris's thriller 'The Ghost' in the 2010 film 'The Ghost Writer'. (nh/rk)