Roman Polanski Faces Fresh Extradition Challenges To U.S. Over 1977 Child Sex Conviction

Roman Polanski, a French-Polish film director, is facing a new attempt to extradite him to the U.S. over his 1977 conviction for a child sexual abuse case after Polish government officials announced on Tuesday that they would appeal a court decision barring Polanski’s deportation to the U.S.

Poland’s justice minister and chief prosecutor, Zbigniew Ziobro, said on Tuesday that he has decided to appeal to the Polish Supreme Court over the ruling, claiming it doesn’t comply with the extradition agreement between the United States and Poland.

In 1977, Polanski pleaded guilty in Superior Court in California to having sex with a 13-year-old girl but then fled to Europe the night before his sentencing. In October 2015, Judge Dariusz Mazur in Krakow, Poland, said the court would not extradite the filmmaker to the U.S.

Ziobro, who came into office in November, said that the judge in case was biased.

“Everyone is equal before the law,” Ziobro told PolskieRadio.

The justice minister believes that the Oscar-winning filmmaker did not receive sufficient punishment. Polanski was in a U.S. jail for just 42 days before fleeing to Europe and was held in Switzerland for a year in 2009 before Swiss government officials decided not to extradite him.

One of Polanski’s lawyer’s Jan Olszewski commented on Ziobro’s new appeal.

“We had been expecting the minister to do it,” Olszewski told TVN24, a Polish T.V. network.

Polanki, 82, usually resides in France, where he is safe from extradition. The film director, who has dual French and Polish citizenship, is currently living at his home in southern Poland, preparing for a film based on the Dreyfus Affair.