How fugitive Roman Polanski finally slipped up

Friends of the award-winning film director Roman Polanski have been asking how he was able to visit Switzerland for ski trips while living as a fugitive in France for the past 30 years - and then, out of the blue, was picked up by Swiss police on Saturday and held for possible extradition to the United States.

The answer is that the Los Angeles County district attorney's office has been keeping tabs on Polanski's movements since a 2005 international alert was issued by the US.

On at least two previous occasions, according to a spokesman, the DA's office learnt that he planned to travel to countries with extradition treaties with the US. On both occasions, documents for his arrest were prepared but Polanski somehow found out what was in store for him, and cancelled the trips.

This time, the DA's office knew he intended to attend the Zurich Film Festival to collect a lifetime achievement award - but Polanski received no tip-off that they were alert to his plan. When he arrived in Switzerland on Saturday, he was arrested by Swiss police and taken into custody.

Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf, Switzerland's Justice Minister, said that because of agreements it has with the US, "when Mr Polanski arrived we had no choice from a legal point of view but to arrest him". She added: "He obviously has the right to appeal and I think he will do so."

Polanski is, indeed, fighting the extradition. His Paris lawyer told today's Figaro: "We will be demanding that he be freed. Then we will fight the extradition."

The director of Chinatown, Rosemary's Baby and The Pianist, is wanted in the United States for sentencing after being convicted in 1978 of drugging and having sex with an under-age girl. He has always maintained that the 13-year-old was sexually experienced and had consented.

One issue he will doubtless use in his argumnent against extradition is that the woman he was convicted of assaulting, Samantha Geimer, now married and living in Hawaii, has publicly forgiven him and said that his long years in exile are punishment enough.

However, at the time of his arrest in 1977 and subsequent trial the following year, the case against him was extremely serious: he was charged with luring Samantha to a photo-shoot and then raping her and forcing her to have oral sex. He denied rape but pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of having sex with an under-age girl.

Faced with a prison term, he fled the United States to Britain just before sentencing. He then moved quickly to France where he had been born. His French citizenship offered him relative safety because France has a policy of not extraditing its citizens.

The 1978 case has hung over Polanski all these years. He has had to ask friends to accept film awards - including an Oscar for The Pianist - on his behalf, and, apart from ski trips to Switzerland, has avoided visiting countries such as Britain with extradition treaties with the US.

In the meantime, he has got on with his life as filmmaker and is revered in French society where he is treated as a serious 'auteur' director. Now 76, he is married to the French actress Emmanuelle Seigner with whom he has two children.

France's culture minister, Frederic Mitterand, said he was "dumbfounded" by Polanski's detention and that he "strongly regrets that a new ordeal is being inflicted on someone who has already experienced so many of them". ·