Polanski breaks silence, laying out his case against extradition to US

Polanski speaks out against extradition to US

PARIS — Filmmaker Roman Polanski, breaking a months-long silence, said Sunday the U.S. is demanding his extradition from Switzerland on a 33-year-old sex case largely to serve him “on a platter to the media.”

Polanski, who is under house arrest in his Alpine Swiss chalet, laid out his case against extradition on an online magazine run by one of his staunchest supporters, French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy.

“I have had my share of dramas and joys, as we all have, and I am not going to try to ask you to pity my lot in life,” he wrote. “I ask only to be treated fairly like anyone else.”

Polanski suggests the case against him is unjust and riddled with discrepancies. Each argument begins with the phrase: “I can remain silent no longer.”

One of Polanski’s complaints is that Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley, “who is handling this case and has requested (the) extradition, is himself campaigning for election and needs media publicity!” Cooley is running for California attorney general.

Swiss authorities are trying to decide whether to extradite Polanski to Los Angeles for having sex in 1977 with a 13-year-old girl.

Polanski was arrested seven months ago as he arrived in Zurich to receive a lifetime achievement award at a film festival. The Oscar-winning director of “Rosemary’s Baby,” ”Chinatown” and “The Pianist” was put behind bars for more than two months before being transferred on $4.5 million bail to house arrest in the luxury resort of Gstaad.

Polanski wrote in the online magazine, La Regle du jeu, that he had mortgaged his apartment to pay the bail.

He added: “I can no longer remain silent because the United States continues to demand my extradition more to serve me on a platter to the media of the world than to pronounce a judgment concerning which an agreement was reached 33 years ago.”