Film director Roman Polanski has been arrested in Switzerland over the weekend on a U.S. warrant related to his statutory rape conviction more 30 years ago.

He was in the country to accept a lifetime achievement award at the Zurich Film Festival, upon arriving in Switzerland the 76-year-old director was taken into custody by Swiss authorities who are now holding Polanski for extradition to the U.S.

Swiss authorities say they will not release Polanski, a French citizen, until the extradition process is complete, including a possible appeal by Polanski in Swiss courts. The director of films such as Chinatown, Romeo and Juliet, Rosemary’s Baby and more recently his 2003 Oscar win for The Pianist, Polanski fled the U.S. in 1978 before his sentencing was complete for the crime of having sex with a 13-year-old girl in California.

Polanski pled guilty to one of six counts and had served the 42-day sentence that prosecutors had agreed to for the crime, but the director, apparently believing the judge was about to renege on the plea bargain agreement and throw him back in jail, fled the country.

In recent years Polanksi had requested that the old case be dismissed, but the U.S. judge hearing the appeal insisted Polanksi appear in person to make his case. The director declined, reportedly fearing arrest.

A friend of Polanski told PEOPLE magazine; “we don’t understand. Roman has been to Switzerland before so we don’t understand why he’s been arrested this time.”

Polanski’s victim, Samantha Geimer, who has said she long ago moved on with her life, told PEOPLE in 1997, “If Polanski comes back – fine. That would at least end it. It will never be over until that happens.”

He is now married to French actress Emmanuelle Seigner and has two children, Morgane and Elvis.

In 2005, he won a libel suit against Vanity Fair magazine over an article that accused him of propositioning a woman while on the way to the funeral of his murdered second wife, Sharon Tate, a victim of the 1969 Charles Manson killings.