After a nine-month impasse with Japanese authorities, former chess champion Bobby Fischer has been granted freedom and flown to Iceland, his new country of residence.
Fischer, who was arrested on July 13 last year for trying to leave Japan using a revoked United States’ passport, was detained in Tokyo and was resisting extradition to the US where he is faces charges of violating US sanctions on Yugoslavia by participating in a 1992 exhibition match against Russian Boris Spassky.
Accompanied by fiancée Miyoko Watai, Fischer flew to Copenhagen on his way to Iceland’s capital Reykjavik. Earlier in 1972, he had beaten Boris Spassky in a match that established him as a world champ.
Calling the arrest a ‘kidnapping’ plan hatched by US President George W Bush and Japan’s Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, and the revoking of his passport ‘illegal’, Fischer said, “I won’t be free until I get out of Japan. Bush is a criminal. He’s a gangster. They are war criminals and should be hung.” The chess champion, famous for his anti-Semitic views, feels that the US is pushing for his deportation because, ‘it’s a Jew-controlled country’.
Iceland’s Parliament granted Fischer citizenship despite his lack of five years’ residency, requisite for becoming a citizen of the country. Fischer’s Tokyo-based Canadian advisor John Bosnitch, hailed the decision as ‘historic’ because Iceland ‘stood up to the Earth’s sole superpower and demonstrated it can no longer bully individuals or nations’. However, the threat of extradition still hangs over 62-year-old Fischer since Iceland has signed an extradition treaty with the US.
Iceland’s Ambassador to Japan Thordur Oskarsson said even though the US had sent a ‘message of disappointment’ to Iceland’s government, the decision prevailed on ‘humanitarian grounds’. He, however, ruled out any anti-American sentiment in the decision, which he said came from memories of the Fischer-Spassky match that made Iceland famous. “We are a microstate, and Fischer gave us one of our two moments in history,” the ambassador said adding, “despite all of his antics during the match with Spassky, he created something special with our people outside chess. So, even though people know he may have made some stupid statements, Icelanders say ‘we owe him one. We owe it to be kind to him’.”
US State Department’s deputy spokesman Adam Ereli said the US had formally asked Japan to hand Fischer over. “Fischer is a fugitive from justice. There is a federal warrant for his arrest,” he said.
At first, Japan refused to allow Fischer to go to Iceland because according to Japanese laws an individual can be deported only to his or her country of origin. Later, however, it relented following Iceland’s decision.
If convicted in the US, Fischer can be incarcerated for up to 10 years, with a fine of US$ 250,000.
Meanwhile, Fischer is also embroiled in a money-laundering case, after having declared that he received a remuneration of US$ 3.5 million for the Yugoslavia match, and announcing that he won’t pay income tax on that amount.
