Polish prosecutors question Polanski over U.S. sex crime warrant

By Wojciech Zurawski KRAKOW (Reuters) - Polish prosecutors interviewed filmmaker Roman Polanski on Thursday in connection with a U.S. arrest warrant over a 1977 sex crime conviction, then let him go free saying there were no grounds to hold him. Polanski plans to shoot a film in Poland next year, and his lawyers have said they were seeking assurances he would not risk arrest under the U.S. warrant, as happened five years ago when he traveled to Switzerland. His lawyers said the decision by prosecutors in the southern Polish city of Krakow to take no action meant that Polanski, who was born to Polish parents but lives in France, was now free to travel back and forth to Poland. In an interview from Krakow with Polish television, Polanski declined to answer questions about the legal issues, saying only he hoped the question of whether Poland would extradite him had now been settled "once and for all". He will come back to Poland for an extended period starting early next year, to work on the film and also to "show Poland, which they barely know, to my growing children," he told the TVN24 broadcaster. The filmmaker, director of classics including "Rosemary's Baby" and "Chinatown", is planning to shoot a film in Krakow about the 19th century Dreyfus affair. Boguslawa Marcinkowska, spokeswoman for the district prosecutor's office in Krakow, said prosecutors, acting on a request from the U.S. authorities, summoned Polanski for an interview earlier on Thursday. He presented himself at the prosecutor's office, and complied with a request to provide prosecutors with his contact details and details of his place of residence. "The district prosecutor's office in Krakow took the decision not to carry out a temporary arrest," Marcinkowska said. "The prosecutor also did not apply any other sanctions, such as barring him from leaving the country." "If a request concerning his possible extradition should be sent to the Polish prosecutor-general, then only at that point can the next steps be considered." SWISS ARREST The filmmaker pleaded guilty in 1977 to having unlawful sex with 13-year-old Samantha Geimer during a photoshoot in Los Angeles, fueled by champagne and drugs. Polanski served 42 days in jail as part of a 90-day plea bargain. He fled the United States the following year, believing the judge hearing his case could overrule the deal and put him in jail for years. In 2009, Polanski was arrested in the Swiss city of Zurich on a 31-year-old U.S. warrant and placed under house arrest. He was freed in 2010 after Swiss authorities decided not to extradite him to the United States. Polanski's lawyers in Poland said their client would not try to obstruct any extradition proceedings because while he was in Poland he would put himself at the disposal of prosecutors and the courts. "Following the prosecutors' decision, Roman Polanski can come to Poland when he wants and leave Poland when he wants," the lawyers, Jan Olszewski and Jerzy Stachowicz, said in a statement provided to Reuters. "Regarding whether the Polish authorities will receive an extradition request, we do not know. If they do receive it, it will be examined by an independent Polish court." Polanski spent part of his childhood in Krakow, until it was occupied by Nazi German forces in World War Two. He escaped Krakow's Jewish ghetto but his mother died in the nearby Auschwitz concentration camp. After World War Two he returned to Krakow, and later emigrated. The film he is planning to shoot is about Alfred Dreyfus, a French artillery officer of Jewish heritage whose conviction on trumped-up treason charges was criticized as having been motivated by anti-Semitism. The case created a schism in French society and Dreyfus was later exonerated. (Additional reporting by Marcin Goclowski and Pawel Sobczak in Warsaw; Writing by Christian Lowe; Editing by Andrew Heavens)