A Polish court yesterday rejected a US request to extradite film-maker Roman Polanski over a childsex conviction.

The judge said his extradition was “inadmissible”. The decision is not legally binding, as prosecutors can now appeal the ruling.

Should the court make a legally binding decision to grant the US request, it will be up to the justice minister to decide on the fate of the 82-year-old Polanski.”(Roman Polanski’s) extradition is inadmissible” said Judge Dariusz Mazur at the district court in the southern city of Krakow.

Extraditing Mr Polanski would lead to him being held in harsh conditions for weeks or months in the US while his case was being processed, Mr Mazur said.

The Oscar-winning director pleaded guilty in 1977 to having sex with a 13-year-old girl during a photo shoot in Los Angeles.

Mr Polanski served 42 days in jail after a plea bargain. He fled the United States the following year to Britain and then to France, believing the judge hearing his case could overrule the deal and put him in jail for years.

In 2009, he was arrested in Zurich on a US warrant and placed under house arrest. He was freed in 2010 after Swiss authorities decided not to extradite him.

The United States requested Mr Polanski’s extradition from Poland after he made a high-profile appearance in Warsaw in 2014.

The filmmaker, who has Polish and French nationality, lives in Paris but he also has an apartment in Krakow, southern Poland.

Since fleeing the United States, Mr Polanski won an Oscar for best director for The Pianist. He was in Poland for the shooting of a new film on the Dreyfus affair based on a novel by Robert Harris.