OSCAR-WINNING filmmaker Roman Polanski has broken his silence to criticise America for seeking his extradition on an under-age sex case that dates back 33 years.

In an emotive open letter, published in France and entitled, I Can Remain Silent no Longer, the director, who is under house arrest in Switzerland, says he is only seeking to be “treated fairly”.

He accuses the US of wanting to serve him “on a platter” to the media. “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. I ask only to be treated fairly like anyone else,” he writes.

The case against Polanski, 76, dates back to 1977 when he was arrested in the US and pleaded guilty to having unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl. He spent 42 days in a Californian prison but fled before a final court appearance for sentencing. He was arrested in September last year at Zurich airport after travelling from his home in Paris to collect a lifetime award for his work. After two months in prison he was put under house arrest on bail of three million euros at his chalet in Gstaad. In the 900-word statement circulated by his friend, French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy, Polanski argues why he should be set free. “It is true 33 years ago I pleaded guilty, and I served time at the prison for common law crimes at Chino, not in a VIP prison.

“That period was to have covered the totality of my sentence. By the time I left prison, the judge had changed his mind and claimed that the time served at Chino did not fulfil [sic] the entire sentence, and it is this reversal that justified my leaving the United States,” he writes.

He lays out eight points in support of his case each headed with the title phrase “I can remain silent no longer because the American authorities have just decided, in defiance of all the arguments and depositions submitted by third parties, not to agree to sentence me in absentia even though the same court of appeal recommended the contrary.”

Polanski says the extradition request sent to the authorities in Switzerland is based on a lie in that it suggests the time he spent in prison was for the purposes of “diagnostic study”.

— The Guardian, London