Polanski arrest: what the commentators are saying

Roman Polanski's detention by Swiss police on an international arrest warrant for having sex with an underage Californian girl 30 years ago has drawn out the stark differences between French and other nations' attitudes to sexual misbehaviour. Polanski has been able to live in France for 30 years, where he is revered as an auteur director. He is now fighting extradition from a Swiss jail cell.

WHAT THEY ARE SAYING
Frederic Mitterrand, French culture minister
"In the same way as there is a generous America which we love, there is also a certain kind of America which is frightening, and it is this America which has now shown us its face."

Bernard Kouchner, French foreign minister
"This affair is frankly a bit sinister... A man of such talent, recognised throughout the world, recognised especially in the country that arrests him - all this is not very pleasant."

The Swiss Association of Directors
"[The arrest is] a grotesque judicial farce and a monstrous cultural scandal."

Eugene Robinson, Pulitzer-prize winning journalist in the Washington Post
"A grown man drugging and raping a 13-year-old girl? That's not remotely a close call. It's wrong in any moral universe - and deserves harsher punishment than three decades of gilded exile."

Steve Cooley, Los Angeles County District Attorney
"Some form of justice will finally be done."

Patrick Goldstein in the Los Angeles Times
"It is not a story that can have a happy ending. I think Polanski has already paid a horrible, soul-wrenching price for the infamy surrounding his actions. The real tragedy is that he will always, till his death, be snubbed and stalked and confronted by people who think the price he has already paid isn’t enough."

Harvey Weinstein, film producer
"Every US filmmaker [should] lobby against any move to bring Polanski back to the US. Whatever you think of the so-called crime, Polanski has served his time."

Dominic Lawson in the Independent"If it were their 13-year-old daughter who had been drugged and sodomised, would they [who defend Polanski] still feel that the perpetrator was in fact the victim?"

Leader column in The Times"There has been no moral justification for Polanski's freedom these years, just as there can be no moral objection to his arrest."

Robert Harris, author of The Ghost, Polanski's current film project"This is a high-profile action designed to send out some sort of message to someone somewhere.  No one condones what happened in the 70s, but I think this is pretty appalling." ·