A retired prosecutor whose revelations in a recent documentary on Roman Polanski highlighted serious irregularities in the filmmaker's 1977 child sex trial now says he lied about the case, the Los Angeles Times reported on Wednesday.

David Wells, now 71, said in the documentary 'Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired' that he had talked with the judge in the famous case before he rendered a sentence and told him that the Paris-born director deserved prison.

After the documentary aired on US cable channel HBO, Polanski's lawyers seized on Wells's revelations and said in court documents that he and the judge, Laurence Rittenband, engaged in misconduct by wrongly discussing the case in private, the Times reported.

The alleged meeting took place when Polanski was awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty to having unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl. Afraid of being condemned to a long prison sentence, Polanski fled the United States in January 1978.

"That was not true," Wells told The Times, referring to the closed-door meeting.

"I like to speak of it as an inept statement, but the reality is that it was a lie."

Wells, who at the time was not the assigned prosecutor in the case, told the newspaper he had invented the story because he thought the documentary would not air in the United States.

Judge Rittenband died in 1993.

Wells told the Times he notified the district attorney's office earlier this year that he had lied, and apologized, but said he decided to go public with his announcement after Polanski's weekend arrest.

The Oscar-winning director, regarded as a fugitive by US authorities, was detained in Switzerland on Saturday, causing shockwaves in political and cultural circles.

The prosecutor's office in Los Angeles has said he would seek Polanski's extradition.