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Polanski libel trial beamed to his Paris hotel room

Posted on: Monday, 18 July 2005, 05:54 CDT

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.

Source: REUTERS

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