A FINAL decision on whether to extradite filmmaker Roman Polanski to the United States may be a year away, the Swiss justice minister said.
Polanski, 76, 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 are to decide within the coming weeks whether or not to comply with the formal US extradition request filed in October.
“If the Swiss justice ministry decides to grant extradition, Mr Polanski can appeal to the Federal Penal Court and then the Federal Court,” Justice Minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf told Le Matin newspaper.
“In the case of an appeal, the extradition procedure could take a little more. Difficult to say how long, but it could take from several months to a year, as we have already seen.”
Polanski was released from custody on December 4 and is under house arrest at his Swiss home after a court granted him bail of 4.5 million Swiss francs ($A4.68 million), on condition that he surrenders his passport and wears an electronic bracelet to stop him fleeing.
The justice ministry said in early January it was preparing its decision on the US extradition request.
“It could be January, it could also be in February. I am not going to be more precise,” Folco Galli, a spokesman for the justice ministry, said at the time.
The Oscar-winning filmmaker fled the United States 32 years ago before being sentenced on charges of having unlawful sex with the teenager.
A Los Angeles judge earlier this month denied a bid by Polanski’s lawyers requesting the filmmaker be sentenced in absentia.
Lawyers for the victim in the case, 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.
