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 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.
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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)
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