Polanski
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- lambsy0
Sept. 27 (Bloomberg) -- Swiss police arrested film director Roman Polanski at the request of U.S. authorities on the basis of a 1978 arrest warrant, the Zurich Film Festival said today in an e-mailed statement.
Polanski, who was held on his arrival in Switzerland yesterday, was due to receive an award at the festival today, the organizers said.
In July, Polanski asked a California appeals court to overturn a judge's refusal to consider his request to throw out a 1977 case in which he pleaded guilty to having sex with a 13-year-old girl.
California Superior Court Judge Peter Espinoza, who said in February that Polanski would have to come to the U.S. to get a hearing on his request, invoked the fugitive disentitlement doctrine to avoid any consideration of the facts and circumstances which forced Mr. Polanski to leave the country,'' Polanski's s lawyers said July 7 in a court filing.
Polanski, 76, left the U.S. in 1978 before he was sentenced and is considered a fugitive in the country. He hasn't been able to return to the U.S. since then. The director, a French citizen, asked the Los Angeles court in December to dismiss the case because of judicial and prosecutorial misconduct.