Incoming Polish government to back Polański's extradition?

Polański is due to attend the final court session in Kraków on 30 October, although he may choose to reside in France, while he is still free to travel between the two countries.

In the run-up to the election, leader of the Law and Justice party Jarosław Kaczyński was quoted by the Associated Press to the effect that “There was open talk that he should not be made responsible for his deeds because he is an outstanding, world-famous film-maker”.

“We totally reject this attitude.”

Polański fled the US in February 1978, shortly before being sentenced for unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl. He settled in Paris, where he has been chiefly based ever since.

In 2009, while entering Switzerland to receive a prize at the Zurich Film Festival, he was arrested, as a US request for his extradition had been freshly submitted. However, Swiss authorities ultimately backed down after keeping him under house arrest for several months at his villa in Gstaad).

The director returned to France, but he has frequently visited Poland, where he had grown up, and where he hope to make his next film.

US authorities became aware that Polański was in Poland again last autumn after he attended the opening of a museum in Warsaw.

An extradition request was submitted by the US to Poland, and the first hearing was held in February.

Forthcoming film in jeopardy

Polański, who owns a residential property in Kraków, has been spending increasing amounts of time in Poland in recent months in connection with his next feature film.

The screenplay, an adaptation of Robert Harris's thriller 'An Officer and a Spy', explores the Dreyfus Affair, a notorious miscarriage of justice in pre- World War I France. (nh/rk)