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Polanski Detained in Switzerland For 32 Year-old Crime
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We are incredulous! We absolutely can not believe it. Everything about this case is offensive.
After all the years of self-exile in France, Oscar winning film director, Roman Polanski has been kidnapped, detained, arrested in Zurich. Switzerland for extradition to the U.S. on charges associated with a crime that was adjudicated more than 30 years ago in California.The judge, who approved the plea bargain, and then later misconducted himself by attempting to renege on the agreement is dead.
The young girl, with whom Polanski was charged with having sexual relations, Samantha Geimer, is now an adult, who has not only disclosed her identity, she has long ago reached an out of court settlement with the beleaguered Polanski for an undisclosed sum of money after filing a lawsuit; Geimer has joined Polanski’s request for dismissal and says she wants the case to be over.
Fat chance of that happening in our lifetime Samantha. With foreign government agencies like the Swiss Justice Ministry to carry out America’s vendettas against artists and intellectuals of Polanski’s stature in order to curry favor with our U.S. leaders the odds are really low for a sensible resolution in Polanski’s lifetime.
One thinks of the American government’s relentless pursuit of the late Bobby Fischer, the chess champion who played chess despite being told by our government in 1992 not to play a match with Boris Spassky in the former Yugoslavia; or the inevitable fate of one Orenthal J. Simpson. Not exactly an intellectual giant, he is one who flaunted, as perceived by government officials, his celebrity, his Teflon-iness and its privilege to be, as some would say, “above the law”.
Bad enough the Swiss banks have acquiesced to U.S. government demands to know who the depositors are at the Swiss financial institutions. Now the Swiss law enforcement give it up to the Americans, too. We wonder if the price to entrap abduct capture a fugitive film giant like Polanski included a pound of flesh as well.
Go for the easy targets. That’s our government’s forte. Remember former Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska. Poor old guy, he was in his eighties when federally indicted for taking about $125,000 over 25 or 30 years of his 41 years as a United States senator. The the lead federal prosecutor in the case was high-fiving herself when the verdict finding Stevens was guilty of corruption charges was announced. Easy targets do not require much work.
Like Stevens, Polanski is no spring chicken. He’s 76 years old. He’s an intellectual whose mother died in a WWII Nazi death camp. He’s experienced the death of his wife and their unborn child in the 1969 sensational murders of Sharon Tate and four others by the Manson gang. He managed to survive all those traumatic events to be detained by police in formerly neutral Switzerland on a matter that is so old there is hardly anyone alive who was there who remembers the details.
We’re outraged by the report, according to the Associated Press, the judge who in May of this year, in considering the dismissal of the case actually stated in his ruling, he reviewed not only legal documents, but also watched the HBO documentary, “Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired.” this fact makes us wonder where
Additionally Superior Court Judge Peter Espinoza in Los Angeles dismissed Polanski’s bid to throw out the case because the director failed to appear in court to press his request; the judge did say there was “substantial misconduct” in the handling of the original case.
We will certainly rest more peacefully knowing whether beloved football star, renowned chess champion, or Hollywood film director are behind bars; that like the very American characterization of the Royal Mounted Canadian Police, the U.S. Marshalls, with the help of other nations with obscure extradition treaties with our government, will always get their man.
Aren’t there some art thieves or international gun runners or illegal drug smugglers on the loose who need to be apprehended? Or one Osama bin Laden in need of being arrested and subsequently extradited to the United States for punishment? Geesh!
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