GENEVA — Friday was a banner day for director Roman Polanski: His new film premiered in Berlin, and Swiss authorities pledged not to extradite him to the U.S. as long as his appeal on a sex case was still being considered in Los Angeles.
Compared with the past four months being under house arrest in Switzerland, it was a win-win, although Polanski could not walk the red carpet at the Berlin film festival Friday night for the debut of his movie “The Ghost Writer,” starring Ewan McGregor and Pierce Brosnan.
“It’s a great pity he’s not here to launch the film with us,” McGregor said at a news conference in Berlin.
And in a new twist to his long legal saga, the Swiss Justice Ministry declared it would make “no sense” to shift Polanski from house arrest at his alpine chalet until U.S. courts ruled definitively that he must be sentenced in person to further jail time for having sex in 1977 with a 13-year- old girl. The Associated Press
