France Divided Over Polanski Case
PARIS — After two days of widespread expressions of support for jailed filmmaker Roman Polanski, from European political leaders as well as leading cultural figures there and in the United States, the mood was shifting among French politicians Tuesday about whether the government should have rushed to rally around the Oscar-winning director.
Marc Laffineur, the vice-president of the French assembly and a member of President Nicolas Sarkozy’s ruling center-right party, the UMP, took issue with the French culture and foreign minister’s remarks supporting Mr. Polanski, saying “the charge of raping a child 13 years old is not something trivial, whoever the suspect is.”
Within the Green party, Daniel Cohn-Bendit — a French deputy in the European parliament whose popularity is rising — also criticized Sarkozy administration officials for leaping too quickly to Mr. Polanski’s side despite the serious nature of his crime. On the extreme right, the father and daughter politicians Jean-Marie and Marine Le Pen also attacked the ministers, saying they were supporting “a criminal pedophile in the name of the rights of the political-artistic class.”
Meanwhile, an international team of lawyers was fighting Tuesday to free Mr. Polanski from a Swiss jail, where he’s being held for possible extradition to the United States. The arrest last weekend of the 76-year-old filmmaker as he arrived at Zurich’s airport to attend a local film festival is quickly exposing deep fault lines between his supporters in the arts, entertainment and politics and his increasingly outspoken critics.
Mr. Polanski a French and Polish citizen,. fled the United States in 1978 just before he was to be sentenced for having sex with a minor — a 13-year-old girl — under a plea agreement in which he avoided other charges including rape and sodomy.
For two days, supporters in the demi-monde of movies and media circulated petitions and took to the airwaves in his defense. Among them was the philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy, who suggested that perhaps the Swiss had more serious criminal matters to attend to than Mr. Polanski, who, he said, “perhaps had committed a youthful error.”
Marie-Louise Fort, a French lawmaker in the Assembly who has sponsored anti-incest legislation, said in an interview that she was shocked that Mr. Polanski was attracting support from the political and artistic elite. “I don’t believe that public opinion is spontaneously supporting Mr. Polanski at all,” she said. “I believe that there is a distinction between the mediagenic class of artists and ordinary citizens that have a vision that is more simple.”
The mood was even more hostile in blogs and e-mails to newspapers and news magazines. Of the 30,000 participants in an online poll by the French daily Le Figaro, more than 70 percent said Mr. Polanski, 76, should face justice. And in the magazine Le Point, more than 400 letter writers were almost universal in their disdain for Mr. Polanski.
That contempt was not only directed at Mr. Polanski, but at the French class of celebrities — nicknamed Les People — who are part of Mr. Polanski’s rarefied Parisian world. Letter writers to Le Point scorned Les People as the “crypto-intelligentsia of our country” who deliver “eloquent phrases that defy common sense.”
Still, many others continued to rally to the Oscar-winning director’s defense.
Film industry leaders like Woody Allen, Pedro Almodovar, Martin Scorsese and Costa Gavras signed a petition with about 100 names that expressed “stupefaction” with the arrest of Mr. Polanski at the Zurich airport. But support was not universal; Luc Besson, a prominent French film director and producer, was not on the list, though he describes himself as a Polanski friend.
“This is a man who I love a lot and know a little bit,” Mr. Besson said in a radio interview with RTL Soir. “Our daughters are good friends. But there is one justice, and that should be the same for everyone. I will let justice happen.” He added, , “I don’t have any opinion on this, but I have a daughter, 13 years old. And if she was violated, nothing would be the same, even 30 years later.” Meanwhile, Mr. Polanski remains in custody somewhere in Zurich; officials have not said exactly where. He was, however, visited by French and Polish diplomats, who afterward pronounced that he was being well treated.
In a statement on Tuesday, the Swiss Criminal Court said it would decide “in the next few weeks” on its response to Mr. Polanski’s request for release. Any decision can be appealed, the Swiss Justice Ministry said over the weekend.
Mr. Polanski’s lawyer in Paris, Hervé Temime, said Mr. Polanski was seeking release even if conditions were attached.
Much of the initial criticism of the American and Swiss authorities behind the arrest centered on the question of timing: why was Mr. Polanski arrested now, three decades after his guilty plea, and not on any of the countless other visits he has made to Switzerland over the years (he maintains homes there and in France)?
Defending their actions, American law enforcement officials in Los Angeles have said the arrest was a simple matter of opportunity, and they issued a timeline that showed that they had quietly submitted an Interpol “red notice” — a request for international assistance in arresting a fugitive — concerning Mr. Polanski that was originally distributed in 2002. A spokesman for Interpol in Lyon, France, declined to comment on Tuesday. The red notice on Mr. Polanski apparently was not posted on Interpol’s public Web site, which is used to enlist the help of the public in pursuit of fugitives.
“He just showed up at a time and a place where we knew he would be available,” Sandi Gibbons, a spokeswoman for Stephen L. Cooley, the Los Angeles County district attorney, said Monday.
The district attorney’s office circulated a list of the actions it had taken and the inquiries it had made to track and try to apprehend Mr. Polanski as he traveled to at least 10 countries, including what appeared to be a near miss in 2007, when officials relayed a request for information from Israel about a visit he made there. By the time the information arrived, “Polanski had left Israel and was not arrested,” the prosecutors’ advisory said.
While Mr. Polanski has lived a fairly open life, he has avoided visits to Britain, where extradition would be easier. When in Germany directing his latest film, “The Ghost,” Mr. Polanski occasionally avoided the set, directing through a remote communications setup and leading some members of the cast and crew to believe that he was trying to make apprehension more difficult, according to a person briefed on the shoot and speaking on condition of anonymity.
Mr. Polanski was originally been charged with six criminal counts, including rape and sodomy, involving a 13-year-old girl whom he was accused of plying with alcohol and drugs. He eventually pleaded guilty to a single count of having sex with a minor, spent 42 days in state prison under psychiatric evaluation, and fled on the eve of his sentencing in the belief that the judge in the case would not agree to let him off without further jail time.
A documentary film released last year reignited interest in the case, and raised concerns about possible judicial and prosecutorial misconduct. In the film, a prosecutor describes how he had coached the judge, now deceased, concerning Mr. Polanski’s sentencing.
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