Swiss Won't Extradite Celebrity Child Rapist

I guess the beautiful people live by a different set of rules.

Reuters reports that the Swiss Ministry of Justice has decided not to extradite film director Roman Polanski to the United States.

The film director has been held in Switzerland since last September on an extradition request made by U.S. authorities for a 1977 sex case.

Somehow Polanski Story Gets Even Sleazier

Child rapist and Hollywood hero Roman Polanski not only fled from justice for raping and drugging a 13-year-old, now it's revealed he may not have even paid up on an agreed settlement with his victim.

What a guy.

Roman Polanski agreed to pay his grown-up rape victim $500,000 to settle a suit 15 years after he fled the United States, according to court documents made public yesterday.

The deal with Samantha Geimer was reached in October 1993. The terms were confidential, but the amount was disclosed in court because of a two-year struggle to get the film director to pony up.

Court records do not indicate whether the filmmaker, now 76, ever did pay Geimer, who was 13 when he raped her in 1977.

The last court filing, in August 1996, shows that he owed her, with interest, $604,416.22.

Polanski's attorney, David Finkle, declined comment. Geimer and her family did not return calls seeking comment, and her attorney, Lawrence Silver, did not immediately return a call for comment.

More here.

The deal they hammered out called, in part, for Polanski to pay Geimer $500,000 with interest no later than Oct. 11, 1995, according to filings by her attorney. The deadline came and went with no check from Polanski, her attorneys alleged in court documents. A court ordered a formal judgment against Polanski for the amount plus interest -- just over $600,000. The following year, her attorneys enlisted the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department in an attempt to garnish money intended for Polanski from movie studios, his agent and the Screen Actors Guild, the records show.

The case file does not reveal how the issue was resolved. The final document filed in the case bears an August 1996 stamp and has the director still owing Geimer $604,416.

Roman Polanski Arrested in Switzerland

The long arm of the law finally caught up to this bum after 31 years. A shame they didn't pick up fugitive Clinton pal Marc Rich while they were at it.

Roman Polanski was arrested by Swiss police at the request of U.S. authorities as the director arrived in the country to receive an award at the Zurich Film Festival.

Polanski was held yesterday on a 1978 U.S. arrest warrant, the festival organizers said today in an e-mailed statement. The arrest was confirmed by Zurich Cantonal Police spokesman Stefan Oberlin in a telephone interview.

Oberlin wouldn’t comment further on the arrest, referring questions to the Justice Ministry in the capital, Bern. The ministry couldn’t be reached immediately for comment.

Polanski, 76, left the U.S. in 1978 prior to being sentenced for having sex with a 13-year-old girl. He hasn’t returned since and is considered a fugitive in the country. The director, a French citizen, asked a Los Angeles court in December to dismiss the 1977 case because of judicial and prosecutorial misconduct.

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 that forced the director to leave the country, Polanski’s lawyers said July 7 in a court filing.

A special ceremony will be held at the Zurich festival tonight “to allow everyone to express their solidarity for Roman Polanski and their admiration for his work,” the festival management said in their e-mail.

Figures these twits would admire a child molester.