Paris, Sep 28 (DPA) Film director Roman Polanski, jailed in Switzerland on an American arrest warrant, will fight extradition to the United States, his French attorney said Monday.
The 76-year-old Polanski “has rejected the extradition demand… by the US”, Herve Temime said in a press statement.

Polanski was arrested late Saturday in Zurich, Switzerland, on an arrest warrant dating from a 1977 California case in which he pleaded guilty to unlawful intercourse with a 13-year-old girl he plied with champagne and sedatives.

Temime also said that Polanski’s Swiss attorney would ask for the director’s release from a Zurich jail.

In addition, Polanski will now go before a Swiss court to challenge the arrest warrant and the extradition order, a process that could drag out for months, according to a Swiss Justice Ministry spokesman.

Reacting to the arrest, actors and film directors from around the world have put their names to a petition demanding that Polanski be freed, French media reported Monday.

The artists who joined the demand for Polanski’s “immediate release” from a Zurich jail include actresses Fanny Ardant and Monica Bellucci, directors Ettore Scola, Wong Kar-wai and Costa-Gavras and the president of the Cannes film festival, Gilles Jacob.

A number of film associations, including the Cannes festival, have also thrown their official support behind the demand.

French Culture Minister Frederic Mitterand called the arrest “absolutely appalling”.

“There is an America that is generous and which we love, there is also this America that frightens us, and it is this America that has now shown us its face,” Mitterand told Europe 1 radio.