Previous traps for Polanski failed

U.S. authoritiessaid Sundaythey've tried to capture director Roman Polanski on his previous trips to Switzerland, but it wasn't until recently that they were able to lay the groundwork days ahead in order to facilitate his arrest by Swiss police.

Polanski, a French citizen, was taken in by Swiss police at Zurich's airport on Saturday night ashearrived for a film festival that was honouring him with a retrospective of his work.

"There have been other times through the years when we have learned of his potential travel, but either those efforts fell through or he didn't make the trip," William Sorukas, chief of the U.S. Marshals Service's domestic branch, said Sunday.

This time round, U.S. authorities learned of the director's trip days in advance and were able to get the operation going.

The director has spent the past three decades in France, visiting only a handful of other countries. He's been avoiding a U.S. arrest warrant over his 1977 guilty plea to having unlawful sexual intercourse with a 13-year-old girl. France does not have an extradition treaty with the U.S. that covers Polanski's crime.

Polanski is known to spend time in Switzerland skiing, and according to British writer Robert Harris whose book Ghost is being adapted to screen by the filmmaker Polanski owns a home in the Swiss village of Gstaad.

French culture minister 'dumbfounded'

France's culture minister says he's upset and "dumbfounded" by Polanski's arrest.

"[I] strongly regret that a new ordeal is being inflicted on someone who has already experienced so many of them," Culture Minister FrdricMitterrand said.

Mitterrand's ministry also released a statement Sunday that French President Nicolas Sarkozy "is following the case with great attention and shares the minister's hope that the situation can be quickly resolved."

The Swiss justiceministry said that Polanski was in "provisional detention for extradition," but that he would not be transferred to U.S. authorities until all extradition proceedings are done.

Swiss Justice Minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf said the filmmaker will be detained in Zurich until those proceedings are finished. The U.S. now has 60 days to file a formal request for his transfer, she added.

Polanski's French lawyer, Georges Kiejman, said on France Inter radio that it was "too early to know"whether his client would be extradited.

"The proceedings must take their course," Kiejman said Sunday. "For now we are trying to have the arrest warrant lifted in Zurich."

Polanski can fight his detention and any extradition decision in the Swiss courts.

Personal history of ordeals

Mitterrand's reference to a "new ordeal" recalls Polanski's personal history of escaping Poland with his parents as a child from Krakow's Jewish ghetto. His mother died at the Nazi death campatAuschwitz.

Then in 1969, after working his way into Hollywood as an acclaimed director of classics such asRepulsion and Rosemary's Baby, his pregnant wife, Sharon Tate,was murdered along with four others by followers of Charles Manson at Polanski's rented home in Los Angeles.

Throughout 2008, Polanski sought to havethe U.S.case against himdismissed.In February, an L.A. judge said he might reconsider the case if the Oscar-winning director appeared in court in person.

Polanski declined to set foot in the United States.

The filmmakermade the appeal in the wake of the release of Marina Zenovich's acclaimed documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, which reveals new information implying that several figures manipulated the situation behind the scenes.