Roman Polanski could be extradited to the United States to face charges for a 1977 child sex case, but only if Poland agrees to send him.
The extradition request came from prosecutors in Los Angeles and will be passed on to the Polish city of Krakow, where Polanski, 81, is
planning to shoot a film, Reuters reported.
Krakow prosecutors interviewed Polanski in October, determined there were no grounds to arrest him, and said they would await an extradition request, the news agency reported. Polanski’s lawyer, Jerzy Stachowicz, told Reuters that nothing has arisen that would change the prosecutors' decision not to arrest the filmmaker.
Mateusz Martyniuk, a spokesman for the prosecutor general's office in Warsaw, said prosecutors would want to summon Polanski for questioning.
The case stems from 1977, when Polanski pleaded guilty to having unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl during a photoshoot in Los Angeles. He fled the United States after serving 42 days in jail as part of a 90-day plea bargain. He was arrested in Switzerland in 2009, placed under house arrest, and freed in 2010.
Polanski, who won an Academy Award for Best Director for his 2002 film "The Pianist," plans to make a movie about a French spy scandal in
Poland this year, the New York Daily News reported.
The filmmaker has been trying to get the case against him dismissed, and a motion for a new hearing was denied in December, the Daily News said.
Martyniuk told The Associated Press that Poland generally doesn't extradite its citizens.
The Polish statute of limitations doesn’t apply to U.S. requests, the news agency noted.
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