|
No, the fact he was extradited from France was not due to his fame. It was due to his French citizenship. France does not extradite citizens.
As for why now, probably because someone was paying enough attention and pulled the correct levers to get Switzerland to do something when next he entered the country (Switzerland's "neutrality" is not of a form that includes granting asylums to accused criminals, it simply means that they refuse to participate in any outside war).
My view is that he got screwed (bad pun unintended) in the '70s when he reached an extremely lenient plea agreement and the judge decided he would not go along with it (whether that decision was for good or bad reasons I believe it is is entirely within his purview to reject plea agreements). At that point, Polanski should have revoked his guilty plea and gone to trial or negotiated a new plea acceptable to the judge.
Running was the wrong decision. Most of what has happened since is his fault for doing so. Should it be a priority case? Not really, but then I doubt it took much effort. You don't get to choose the life of a fugitive and then say that the stress of having been a fugitive was punishment enough.
I have no real strong feelings on how strongly he should be punished at this point for the original rape but as a matter of precedent it shouldn't be dropped simply because he successfully ran away for long enough.
|