Posted on 03/18/2005 2:07:45 PM PST by GSlob
[abstract]: Icelandic authorities announced that Fisher is to be granted Icelandic citizenship and is to be permitted to leave Japan for Iceland within short time.
Best of luck to Mr. Fisher and the nation of Iceland.
Iceland is a very tolerant country and can surely make room for an hysterical raving anti-semite like Mr. Fisher
The 62-year-old American is wanted in the United States for violating sanctions against the former Yugoslavia by playing a chess match there in 1992. He was arrested in Japan last July for traveling on an invalid U.S. passport.
Chess fans in Iceland, where Fischer won the world title in 1972 in a classic Cold War encounter with Soviet champion Boris Spassky, offered him a home late last year and lobbied officials to issue him a special passport to travel there.
The question remained whether Japan's immigration bureau would let him go to Iceland rather than deport him to the United States, but an opposition politician in Tokyo said this week after a briefing by immigration officials that he would be allowed to leave if Iceland gave him citizenship.
Icelandic parliamentarian Bjarni Benediktsson told Reuters that a committee dealing with the request agreed on Friday to recommend to parliament that it be granted, meaning Fischer could secure Icelandic citizenship by the end of next week.
"Icelandic officials in the embassy in Japan have been liaising with Japanese officials to make sure that Icelandic citizenship would guarantee that Bobby Fischer would be allowed to leave Japan. That was confirmed today," he told Reuters. Benediktsson, who chairs the general committee of the Nordic island's parliament, that dates from Viking times, said Iceland was helping Fischer partly due to his "connections" with the country since the 1972 match and partly for "humanitarian concerns" arising from his status as a "captive" in Japan.
Fischer fell foul of U.S. authorities by playing a match against Spassky in Yugoslavia in 1992 when it was targeted by sanctions during Belgrade's war with breakaway republics.
He then disappeared and did not resurface until after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in the United States. He has spent recent years moving around Europe and Asia to dodge deportation.
I wonder if Iceland will make him change his name to an Icelandic one?
Maybe Iceland will calm him down ... hot baths, and all that. I didn't realize he was a hysterical raving anti-semite - thought he was just a nut.
I didn't either, do you have any info on him, I thought he was just some crazy chess player.
I don't know anything but what's in these posted articles. Playing chess with a Yugoslavian doesn't seem like a big deal to me, crime-wise!
Nothing is going to calm him down. Sadly, this is just the beginning. You know our media is going to flock to Iceland ASAP to get interviews and such. Expect a 60 Minutes special on his "plight" sometime this summer.
Maybe they'll realize the public doesn't care.
There were economic sanctions and he broke them by participating in an event in Yugo. Then he tore up the letter (on camera) issued by Congress demanding he observe the sanctions, as a protest against the US.
The thing that pissed me off most about him is all his anti-semitic comments, and his praise for the 9/11 attacks in the radio interview he did in (i beleive) the Phillipines.
I see your point.
You were correct; Bobby Fisher is now nothing more than a raving loon chess champion.
"Best of luck to Mr. Fisher and the nation of Iceland."
I suspect the honeymoon will be brief.
From http://reti.blogspot.com/2004/07/madness-of-bobby-fischer.html
The 1992 match was played at the height of the Yugoslavian civil war on the island of Sveti Stefan off the coast of Montenegro, and was funded by a Serbian business tycoon who built his fortune in pyramid schemes and went bust the following year.
Fischer had not played competitive chess for two decades and his return against his old foe was a media sensation. Chess aficionados, however, were less impressed by the quality of the play.
Money had been the lure for both players, and in beating Spassky easily, as he had back in 1972, Fischer was said to have earned $3.3m (£1.8m). He spent much of the next year holed up in Belgrade and, in his absence, was indicted by a grand jury in Washington for "trading with the enemy".
Just before the start of the 1992 match, Fischer received an official letter from the US authorities warning him that if he played he would be liable to legal action. He spat on it.
Fischer has not visited the US since; he even missed the funerals of his mother and sister.
The alleged willingness to trade with the Serbian enemy paled into insignificance in US eyes, however, in the hours after the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington DC in 2001.
In a live interview on Filipino radio, he celebrated the news of the tumbling of the twin towers.
"This is all wonderful news," he raved. "I applaud the act. The US and Israel have been slaughtering the Palestinians, just slaughtering them, for years. Robbing them and slaughtering them. Nobody gave a s***. Now it's coming back to the US. F*** the US. I want to see the US wiped out. Death to the US."
Fischer has a penchant for radio rage, and Filipino radio is his medium of choice.
"America is totally under the control of the Jews," he said in a 1999 interview with a radio station in Baguio city. "I mean, look what they're doing now in Yugoslavia."
Former chess champion.
Ya wanna try spelling the subject's name right?
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