Polanski ‘happy’ Polish court rejected extradition to US

Warsaw (AFP) – Oscar-winning director Roman Polanski on Wednesday said he was “happy” the Polish Supreme Court had rejected a bid to extradite him to the United States to face sentencing over a decades-old case of statutory rape.

“I’m happy this business is over once and for all. I only regret that I had to wait so long,” the 83-year-old Polish-French director told private news channel TVN24. 

“I’ll finally be able to feel safe in my own country,” said the director of “Rosemary’s Baby” and “The Pianist” who has won eight Academy Awards.

Polanski, who lives in France and had been avoiding Poland because of the court case, now plans to visit his father’s grave in the southern city of Krakow.

He said he will also pay his respects to friend and fellow Polish filmmaker Andrzej Wajda, who died in October. 

Polanski is wanted in the United States for sentencing over the 1977 statutory rape of Samantha Gailey after a photo shoot in Los Angeles.

He was arrested after Gailey, now Geimer, accused him of forcing her to have sex after drugging her. 

She was 13 at the time. Polanski was 43.

He pleaded guilty to unlawful sex with a minor, or statutory rape, as part of a plea bargain under which he served 42 days in detention while undergoing psychiatric evaluation.

But in 1978, convinced that a judge was going to scrap the deal and hand him a hefty prison sentence, Polanski fled for France.

In 2009 he was arrested in Switzerland on a US extradition request and spent 10 months under house arrest before Bern rejected the US order.

The US then asked Poland to extradite Polanski in January 2015, but a Krakow court rejected the demand the following October.

But after the conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party came to power in November 2015 and Zbigniew Ziobro became justice minister, he announced a review of the decision, saying he wanted to “avoid double standards”.

On Tuesday, Poland’s Supreme Court dismissed the appeal, definitively ending Poland’s part in the 1977 case.

Judge Michal Laskowski stressed his court’s role was not to rule on the merits of the case but rather to make sure due process had been followed by the lower court.

“We did not find a flagrant violation of the law,” he said.