Polanski, a French citizen, was taken in by Swiss police at Zurich's airport on Saturday night as he arrived 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 Frédéric Mitterrand 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 justice ministry said that Polanski was in "provis...