Polanski libel trial beamed to his Paris hotel room

LONDON (Reuters) – Roman Polanski’s libel trial opened in
London on Monday and legal precedent was set when the
proceedings were beamed via video link to the film director in
a Paris hotel room.

Polanski is suing Vanity Fair’s publishers for a July 2002
article describing how the director flirted with a Swedish
woman in a New York restaurant while on his way to his slain
wife’s funeral in Los Angeles.

He denies any such incident took place.

England’s highest court granted Polanski the right to
pursue his action from France and avoid risking extradition to
the United States for a child sex offence.

The 71-year-old, who won a best director Oscar for “The
Pianist” in 2003, has been wanted in the United States after
pleading guilty in 1977 to having sex with a 13-year-old girl.
He fled the country for France before sentence was pronounced.

Polanski has never been back to the United States or
Britain, and if he came to London to pursue his libel action he
would face possible extradition to America. But he cannot be
extradited from his native France for the crime.

Polanski’s lawyers said it was the first time a person had
sued via video link.

One passage in the Vanity Fair article, reproduced in court
documents in February, quoted him promising the “Swedish
beauty”: “I will make another Sharon Tate of you.”

In fact, both sides in the case now accept Polanski was not
at the restaurant en route to Tate’s funeral, but was there
within three or four weeks of the murder.

In 1969, Polanski’s wife Sharon Tate was murdered by
followers of Charles Manson when she was eight months pregnant.

Hollywood actress Mia Farrow is expected to be called as a
witness, as is Debra Tate, the sister of Polanski’s late wife.

Polanski, who escaped German forces when he was a boy in
Poland and whose mother died in a concentration camp, lives in
Paris with his wife, the French actress Emmanuelle Seigner.