Polanksi to stay in Switzerland until US appeal ruling

AFP - The Swiss justice ministry said Friday that a decision on whether to extradite Roman Polanski to the United States cannot be made until the filmmaker's US appeal over his trial is resolved.
  
Polanski is under house arrest in Switzerland over a decades-old child sex case and has been held since September on a US arrest warrant for unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl.
  
Swiss authorities have to decide whether or not to accept the US extradition request.
  
A Los Angeles judge last month denied Polanski's bid to be sentenced in absentia, but his lawyers have signalled they would appeal the ruling.
  
"We'll wait for the moment that this decision is made in the United States," Swiss justice ministry spokesman Guido Balmer told AFP.
  
Polanski's lawyers have until March 24 to file their appeal in Los Angeles.
  
Swiss Justice Minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf has already underlined that the process could take about a year because of the right to appeal any decision on extradition in Switzerland's highest courts.
  
"Difficult to say how long, but it could take from several months to a year, as we have already seen," she told Le Matin newspaper.
  
Polanski was released from custody on December 4 and is effectively under house arrest at his chalet in the snowbound Alpine resort of Gstaad.
  
A Swiss court granted him bail of 4.5 million Swiss francs (three million euros, 4.2 million dollars) and ordered him to surrender his passport and wear an electronic bracelet to stop him fleeing.
  
The Oscar-winning filmmaker fled the United States 32 years ago before being sentenced in the child sex case.
  
Lawyers for the victim, Samantha Geir, filed a court motion in October in Los Angeles renewing calls for the case against the director to be dismissed because of the anguish the renewed attention was causing her.