Director Roman Polanski (76) was taken into custody, Swiss police confirmed on Sunday, on a 1978 US arrest warrant for having sex with a 13-year-old girl. Polanski was flying in to receive an honorary award at the Zurich Film Festival when he was detained late Saturday at the airport, organisers at the festival said in a statement.

Zurich police spokesman Stefan Oberlin confirmed Polanski’s arrest. Rudolf Wyss, the Justice Ministry deputy director, declined to comment but said that Switzerland and the US have an extradition treaty dating back to the 1950s that is in force.

The Polish-born director fled the United States in 1978, a year after pleading guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with a 13-year-old girl. The director has asked a US appeals court in California to overturn a judges’ refusal to throw out his case. He claims misconduct by the now-deceased judge who arranged a plea bargain and then reneged on it.

Polanski has lived for the past three decades in France. He received a directing Oscar in absentia for the 2002 movie The Pianist. Festival organisers 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 criticised authorities for what it deemed “not only a grotesque farce of justice, but also an immense cultural scandal.” A native of France who was taken to Poland by his parents, Polanski escaped Krakow's Jewish ghetto.

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 the classic Rosemary’s Baby in 1968. But his life was shattered in 1969 when his pregnant wife, actress Sharon Tate, was gruesomely murdered by followers of Charles Manson.

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