French President Secures Polanski Release

Polish director Roman Polanski’s family is thanking French President Nicolas Sarkozy for being “very effective” in helping to win his release from a Swiss prison.

“I wouldn’t go so far as to say that it is thanks to the President that Roman has been freed, but he has been super,” Polanski’s sister-in-law, Mathilde Seigner, told Le Parisien newspaper. “The President has been very effective.”

The London Times speculated that Sarkozy’s wife, ex-model Carla Bruni, may have pressured her husband to intervene because she used to hob nob with Paris’ artistic community, which includes Polanski and wife Emmanuelle Seigner.

After initially balking at his release, Swiss authorities agreed to let Polanski move from a cell to his luxurious Alpine chalet once he puts up $4.5 million bail.

A bracelet will allow police to monitor Polanski , but the device does not include a global positioning system to track him should he escape.

“We can only check if the person is at home,” Jonas Peter Weber, a professor at the University of Bern, told the Times. “If the alarm goes off and no police is in the vicinity, the person will be able to flee.”

Sarkozy was first criticized for supporting Polanski in October. He expressed outrage after the director was arrested at a Zurich airport on a U.S. warrant from 1977 for having sex with a 13-year-old girl.

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Polanski to Remain in Jail a Few More Days

Roman Polanski will remain in a jail outside Zurich for at least three more days until he meets the security conditions of his bail, a Swiss official said Friday.

Polanski wouldn’t be placed under house arrest in Switzerland before Monday, because he has yet to fulfill all the requirements to ensure that he stays in his chalet in the Swiss luxury resort of Gstaad, Justice Ministry spokesman Folco Galli said.

Galli did not elaborate, but the 76-year-old director must post $4.5 million bail, surrender his identity papers and be fitted with a monitoring bracelet.

Polanski cannot leave the chalet because the ministry is still deciding whether to extradite him to the United States for having sex in 1977 with a 13-year-old girl. Authorities in Los Angeles want him sentenced after 31 years as a fugitive.

Doubts over Polanski’s whereabouts were answered Friday when the filmmaker’s lawyer Lorenz Erni entered a prison in Winterthur, a city 16 miles (26 kilometers) northeast of Zurich.

Erni declined to speak to reporters after his 80-minute visit in the prison, where Polanski is being treated as an extradition detainee with more privileges than prisoners who have committed crimes in Switzerland.

A former Winterthur inmate said he was held in a cell next to Polanski, and that the Oscar-winning director of “Rosemary’s Baby,” “Chinatown” and “The Pianist” was given better treatment than others.

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Roman Polanski seeks medical attention

Reuters reports that director Roman Polanski, facing extradition to the US for a thirty-one year old rape conviction, has been moved from his jail cell to seek medical treatment for an undisclosed condition. Polanski, whose lawyer has recently said was suffering from depression, is still in Swiss custody as he waits for US authorities to make an official extradition request.

EW