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Polish Court Adjourns Polanski Extradition Case


Filmmaker Roman Polanski enters a courtroom as he arrives at the regional court in his childhood city of Krakow, Poland, Feb. 25, 2015.
Filmmaker Roman Polanski enters a courtroom as he arrives at the regional court in his childhood city of Krakow, Poland, Feb. 25, 2015.

A Polish court on Friday adjourned until mid-September a hearing on whether to extradite filmmaker Roman Polanski to the United States over a 1977 child
sex conviction.

Polanski, who lives in France, is in Poland making a movie but did not appear in the Krakow court on Friday and was represented by lawyers. Judge Dariusz Mazur said Poland had requested further information from U.S. authorities by Aug. 8.

Polanski pleaded guilty in 1977 to having sex with a 13-year-old girl during a photoshoot in Los Angeles fuelled by champagne and drugs.

He served 42 days in jail as part of a 90-day sentence he received in a plea-bargain deal. 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 U.S. warrant and placed under house arrest. He was freed in 2010 after Swiss authorities decided not to extradite him.

Now 81, the filmmaker, who holds Polish and French citizenship, is viewed by many Poles as one of their greatest living cultural figures.

Internationally renowned for such films as Chinatown and The Pianist, Polanski is in Poland making a film about the Dreyfus affair, a political scandal that shook France more than a century ago.

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    Reuters

    Reuters is a news agency founded in 1851 and owned by the Thomson Reuters Corporation based in Toronto, Canada. One of the world's largest wire services, it provides financial news as well as international coverage in over 16 languages to more than 1000 newspapers and 750 broadcasters around the globe.

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