UPDATE - Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, alongside his French counterpart, is to ask President Obama to pardon Roman Polanski, the director now in a Swiss jail awaiting extradition to the US.
Click on the audio icon to listen to the report by Joanna Najfeld.
Saturday, the 76 year-old director - who has dual Polish and French nationality - was arrested at Zurich airport on his way to a film festival.
During a stopover in Cairo, Foreign Minister Sikorski said his ministry intends to appeal to President Obama to show clemency to Polanski for his services to Polish culture. Radoslaw Sikorski told reporters that as a dual national the director is entitled to Poland’s consular services.
The French government has already protested Polanski’s arrest, saying that he was “entrapped” by the Swiss authorities.
Mr Sikorski spoke to France’s foreign minister Bernard Kouchner during the flight to Africa. He stressed that Poland has a special right to express its opinion on the case because a person’s first citizenship is always of primary importance. Roman Polanski was born to Polish-Jewish parents in 1933. He managed to escape from the Jewish ghetto in Krakow as a boy of seven.
Poland’s Minister for Culture Bogdan Zdrojewski said that he was shocked by the news of Roman Polański’s arrest. Polish filmmakers, including Andrzej Wajda and Agnieszka Holland, have asked the Polish authorities to intervene in Polański’s case. In their view, his right to a fair trial has to be defended.
The Oscar winning Roman Polanski is in prison at the airport in Zurich-Kloten and is threatened with extradition for crimes allegedly committed 31 years ago. In 1978, Polanski was charged with the rape of 13-year old American Samantha Geimer. Last year, Geimer asked the court to drop the case, however. The American courts have refused to withdraw the international warrant for his arrest. (pg/mk)
Source: IAR