What Polanski's arrest says about cuckoo clock land
The arrest by Swiss police of the film director Roman Polanski prompts a number of thoughts about the nature of Swiss policing and why they arrested him now. I have personal experience of this aspect of the land of the cuckoo clock.
In the months before the outbreak of the Gulf war in 1991 US Secretary of State James Baker flew into Geneva for last-minute talks with Iraq’s Tariq Aziz, to try to avert the war. As he landed, his accompanying press pack, as is their wont, poured off the plane to film and report his arrival on the tarmac at Geneva airport.
The Swiss authorities were furious, and heavy-handedly intervened to prevent them filming. The media filed a complaint to the interior ministry. Baker himself raised it with his Swiss opposite number. The Swiss response was swift – a trawl through all the media applications to cover the visit to see if any had offended Swiss law.
Ten years earlier, covering Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, I had broken the speed limit and infringed a red light in a mad dash to the TV station to get my report onto News at Ten.
Some months later I received notice of a fine of 30 Swiss francs, and duly paid. I kept the duplicate for my records as proof of payment.
What I didn’t realise, with my basic French, was that this was no duplicate but one of two fines: 30 Swiss francs for the red light, 30 Swiss francs for the speeding.
Swiss police stormed my room in the Geneva Intercontinental hotel at 4.00am the day after the airport fracas. I was heaved naked from my bed, wrapped in a blanket and thrown into a cell in Geneva’s central police station.
I was denied any phone call, left for three hours without contact with anyone, denied a lawyer, and denied food, clothing, and water. There was a bucket in the corner to pee into.
Seven hours later, with my crew in a panic and an Arafat interview lost, I was finally told why I was being held. The small sum of 30 Swiss francs was demanded and I was allowed to call the UK-born manager of the hotel to come and pay it and take me, still in a blanket, back to my room.
So what of Polanski? This is a man who has a home in Switzerland, and who has travelled in and out many times. My reading is that when it was announced that Polanski was coming to collect his high-profile “lifetime achievement award” himself, the Swiss spotted a chance to impress the Americans.
The fact is that relations between the US and Switzerland have been strained of late by a tax case against the giant Swiss UBS bank, which has agreed a settlement over charges it helped wealthy Americans maintain secret high-value accounts.
The Swiss have denied a connection, but what better way for Switzerland to patch up ties with the US than suddenly to be seen complying with a long-outstanding arrest warrant for the high-profile Roman Polanski? What a wizard wheeze.
Except that not many other people seem keen to see the thing reopened. Alas, his arrest tells us little more than that the Swiss love of authority (however cantonised) and of secrecy are still intact. The mountain leopard has not changed her spots.
You may think that I have overdone my own experience. But I assure you that since I first wrote about it five years ago, very many people have contacted me with many more tales of the “police state” in action.