ZURICH — Imprisoned director Roman Polanski is in a “fighting mood” and will battle U.S. attempts to have him extradited from Switzerland to California to face justice for having sex with a 13-year-old girl in 1977, his attorney said Monday.
A tug of war over the director escalated Monday as France and Poland urged Switzerland to free him on bail and pressed U.S. officials all the way up to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on the case.
Swiss police arrested Polanski, 76, on Saturday as he arrived in Zurich to receive a lifetime achievement award from a film festival.
Meanwhile, American prosecutors disputed Polanski’s claim that they had never tried to nab him after he fled overseas. The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office said it had contacts with several countries in efforts to arrest him, including once with Israel as recently as 2007. The Associated Press
