Polanski ‘happy’ after Polish court rejects extradition to US

Oscar-winning director Roman Polanski addresses a press conference after his trial at the regional court in KrakowAFPKrakowOscar-winning director Roman Polanski yesterday said he was “very happy” that a Polish court rejected a bid to extradite him to the US to face sentencing for the rape of a 13-year-old girl in 1977. “I’m obviously very happy that this case is coming to an end. It cost me a lot of energy, health,” the 82-year-old told reporters in the southern city of Krakow where the court is located. “I’m glad I put faith in the Polish justice system,” the Polish-French fugitive added after the court ruled “inadmissibility in extraditing” Polanski. Presiding judge Dariusz Mazur criticised the original US investigation in his two-and-a-half-hour ruling, saying the judges and prosecutors there “seriously broke the rules of a fair trial”. “Had Poland accepted the US extradition request, it would have violated the rights of Polanski and at the same time the European Convention on Human Rights,” the judge decided. The decision in favour of the 82-year-old director of The Pianist, Chinatown and Rosemary’s Baby can still be appealed, court spokeswoman Beata Gorszczyk said earlier yesterday. “The case would then be sent to a higher court, which could uphold the regional court’s decision, overturn it or send it back for retrial,” she said.Polanski spoke of the toll the case had taken on his family -- including French actress Emmanuelle Seigner, whom he married in 1989. His lawyers denied local media reports that he had been waiting for the verdict from aboard a plane at Krakow airport. Lawyer Jan Olszewski said earlier Polanski did not attend the hearing “because of emotional reasons”. If the Polish prosecutor’s office, which is representing the US side, decides to appeal and the extradition is ultimately cleared at the court level, then Poland’s justice ministry would still have the final say. A former justice minister and close ally of Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the leader of the conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party that won Sunday’s general election, said before the verdict that he backed extraditing Polanski. “Paedophilia is an evil that must be pursued,” said Zbigniew Ziobro, justice minister in the 2005-2007 PiS government. “We should allow Polanski’s extradition. We can’t shield anyone from taking responsibility for an act as despicable as abusing a minor.” Kaczynski himself said earlier this month that he “rejected the idea of pardoning someone simply because he is an eminent, world-renowned director.”