• Polanski, new government in Warsaw ready to extradition
  • Polanski, in April decision on extradition for 13-year-old sexual violence in 1977
  • Cinema: The USA is asking Poland to extradite Polanski, accused of sexual violence

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10 June 2017

"Justice is not just punishment". For the first time in 40 years the woman raped by Roman Polanski when she was a 13-year-old girl turned to a judge and asked to dismiss the case.

"Justice is also fairness and consideration," said Samantha Geimer, who returned to Los Angeles yesterday from Hawaii to ask the court to put an end to the decades-long affair that unintentionally starred her. The woman suggested to Los Angeles Superior Court judge Scott Gordon that the director receives in absentia a sentence equal to the one already served: "Without diminishing the responsibility of Mr. Polanski, I implore you to decide in this sense to close the matter as an act of pity for me and my family ".

Samantha, who is 54, returned to Los Angeles accompanied by her husband: "She is tired. She has been asking for the case to be closed for years. She wants to turn the page," said the lawyer for 83-year-old director Harland Braun. The woman's appeal found a wall in the Los Angeles prosecutor's office. Judge Gordon promised a written decision as soon as possible. If it were to be favorable to the director, it would be the end of a story that has been a famous cause for 40 years. After confessing and spending 42 days in prison for the assault of the teen-ager, Polanski had fled to France on the eve of the sentence: he feared that the agreement made with the prosecution would be rejected with the result of sending him for years to prison.

The last attempt to close the case dates back to April: a Los Angeles judge rejected the director's attempt to negotiate from abroad to return to the US without going to jail. This time the goal is to have Polanski's confession declassified and the deposition of a deceased prosecutor who would show procedural irregularities: Braun would like to use the documents to convince the authorities to terminate the international arrest warrant that prevented the director from returning in Hollywood to collect the Oscar for "Il Pianista".

Polanski, whose films include "Tess", "Chinatown" and "Rosemary's Baby", was arrested on a US mandate in Switzerland in 2009 and spent 10 months in prison and under house arrest even though the Swiss judiciary refused 'extradition.

Yesterday's hearing coincided with another famous trial underway in the US against a big show: actor Bill Cosby. The script of the forced seduction of young women is similar: like Cosby with his victims, Polanski also drugged Samantha with champagne and sleeping pills to easily abuse her.