Declaring that he only wants “to be treated fairly like everyone else,” auteur-in-exile Roman Polanski spoke out on his own behalf on Sunday via his ally Bernard-Henri Lévy’s website, claiming that there are “no grounds” for his extradition to the U.S. to face charges related to his decades-old sexual assault case.

BHL:

I have decided to break my silence in order to address myself directly to you without any intermediaries and in my own words.

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.

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 [fulfill] the entire sentence, and it is this reversal that justified my leaving the United States.

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