Film director Roman Polanski is seen as he leaves court in this Oct. 25, 1977 file photo taken in Santa Monica, Calif. Polanski plead guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor but fled the U.S. before being sentenced. (Nick Ut/File/AP)

Filmmaker Roman Polanski was taken into custody, Swiss police confirmed Sunday, on a 1978 U.S. arrest warrant for having sex with a 13-year-old girl.

Polanski was flying in to receive an award at the Zurich Film Festival when he was detained late Saturday at the airport, festival organizers said in a statement.

Zurich police spokesman Stefan Oberlin confirmed Polanski's arrest, but refused to provide more details because he said it was a matter for the Swiss Justice Ministry.

The Swiss Justice Ministry said in a statement Sunday that U.S. authorities have sought the arrest of the 76-year-old director around the world since 2005.

"There was a valid arrest request, and we knew when he was coming," ministry spokesman Guido Balmer told The Associated Press. "That's why he was taken into custody."

Balmer said the U.S. now has to make a formal extradition request.Polish director Roman Polanski, seen in Germany last year, has had to tiptoe around the world since fleeing the U.S. (Roberto Pfeil/Associated Press)

Switzerland and the United States have an extradition treaty dating back to the 1950s that is still in force.

Polanski fled the U.S. in 1978, a year after pleading guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with a 13-year-old girl.

The 76-year-old director of such classic films as Chinatown and Rosemary's Baby has asked a U.S. appeals court in California to overturn a lower tribunal's refusal to throw out his case. He claims misconduct by the now-deceased judge who arranged his plea bargain and then reneged on it.

Polanski has lived for the past three decades in France, where his career has continued to flourish. He received a directing Oscar in absentia for the 2002 movie The Pianist.

Festival organizers said Polanski's detention had caused "shock and dismay," but that they would go ahead with Sunday's planned retrospective of the director's work.

The Swiss Directors Association sharply criticized authorities for what it deemed "not only a grotesque farce of justice, but also an immense cultural scandal."

Wife murdered

A native of France who was taken to Poland by his parents, Polanski escaped Krakow's Jewish ghetto as a child and lived off the charity of strangers. His mother died at the Nazi death camp in Auschwitz.

He worked his way into filmmaking in Poland, gaining an Oscar nomination for best foreign-language film in 1964 for his Knife in the Water. Offered entry to Hollywood, he directed Rosemary's Baby in 1968.

But his life was shattered again in 1969 when his wife, actress Sharon Tate, and four other people were gruesomely murdered by followers of Charles Manson. She was eight months pregnant.

He went on to make another American classic, Chinatown, released in 1974.

In 1977, he was accused of raping a teenager while photographing her during a modelling session. The girl said Polanski plied her with champagne and part of a Quaalude pill at Jack Nicholson's house while the actor was away. She said that, despite her protests, he performed oral sex, intercourse and sodomy on her.

Polanski was allowed to plead guilty to one of six charges, unlawful sexual intercourse, and was sent to prison for 42 days of psychiatric evaluation.

Lawyers agreed that would be his full sentence, but the judge tried to renege on the plea bargain. Aware the judge would sentence him to more prison time and require his voluntary deportation, Polanski fled to France.

The victim, Samantha Geimer, who long ago identified herself publicly, has joined in Polanski's bid for dismissal, saying she wants the case to be over. She sued Polanski and reached an undisclosed settlement.