Polanski: extradition

Filmmaker Roman Polanski has hit a dead end in his bid to be sentenced in absentia for a sex crime 33 years ago, shifting attention back to extradition proceedings in Switzerland, legal experts said yesterday.

Swiss authorities, who have Polanski under house arrest, have said they would put a US request for his extradition on hold until California's courts decided whether he could be sentenced from abroad.

The Los Angeles superior court ruled in January that he must return to California before the case can be put to rest, and a state appeals court affirmed that decision this weekend.

Polanski was charged in 1977 with raping a 13-year-old girl in Hollywood after plying her with champagne and drugs. He later pleaded guilty to having unlawful sex with a minor, but fled the US for France before sentencing. Now 76, he has been a fugitive from justice ever since.

Polanski's latest film, The Ghost Writer, won him the best director prize at the Berlin film festival in February, even as he remained under house arrest.