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TOKYO -- American chess champion Bobby Fischer should be freed immediately and allowed to leave Japan for Iceland rather than face deportation to the United States, his supporters said in a court filing Wednesday. Japan has ordered Fischer, 61, deported to the United States to faces charges of violating international sanctions against the former Yugoslavia, for playing chess there in 1992. The reclusive chess master has been in jail for six months, after his arrest at the Tokyo airport for trying to board a plane to the Philippines with an invalid U.S. passport, and as his immigration case has stalled....

Chess genius Bobby Fischer has lashed out against what he sees as doubts about his virility, boasted of being hugely endowed and claimed his incarceration near the site of Japan's worst nuclear accident is aimed at making him impotent. An apparently tongue-in-cheek Fischer alluded to an old wive's tale that says foot span is often seen as an indication of the length of a penis and pointed out that he wears size 14 shoes. Fischer, speaking from the East Japan Immigration Bureau Detention Center in Ushiku, Tochigi Prefecture, was slamming an article in the Aug. 30 edition of Time magazine...

Thursday, December 16, 2004 at 07:52 JST REYKJAVIK — Iceland said Wednesday it would give a residence permit to chess legend Bobby Fischer, who is being held by Japanese immigration authorities and the United States is seeking to extradite. "The Directory of Immigration has today confirmed that Mr Fischer's application has been approved. The Icelandic Embassy in Tokyo has been instructed to inform Mr Fischer about the decision," Iceland's foreign ministry said in a statement. In an interview aired on Icelandic television station Channel 2 on Monday, Fischer said he had written to Icelandic Foreign Minister David Oddsson requesting asylum....

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The Fischer defence By Andrew Alderson (Filed: 22/08/2004) Last week as Bobby Fischer languished in a detention centre in Japan, his new fiancee announced their impending nuptials. Andrew Alderson reports on the latest twist in the bizarre life of the former world chess champion who has gone from Cold War hero to one of America's Most Wanted. Bobby Fischer was deeply unhappy when a press photographer snatched a picture of him as he was being transferred to a new detention centre in Japan this month. Fischer, the greatest chess player ever, turned virtual recluse, was not worried, however, about being...

THE woman marrying Bobby Fischer, the chess legend threatened with deportation to the United States, reacted with shock yesterday to the news that he already has a common-law wife and a four-year-old daughter in the Philippines.Miyoko Watai, 59, acting president of the Japan Chess Association, said: "I didn’t know. Bobby has never told me this. "I have asked him in the past if he had a child and he never said anything. He told me that he is single." Fischer, 61, was arrested at Tokyo’s Narita Airport in July and is being held pending deportation for travelling on an expired...

Japan Chess Association President Miyoko Watai, left, listens to former world chess champion Bobby Fischer's attorney Masako Suzuki during a press conference in Tokyo. Fischer, who has been held by Japanese immigration authorities for allegedly traveling with a revoked U.S. passport at Narita International Airport near Tokyo in July, has appealed to U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell to help him renounce U.S. citizenship as he announced plans to marry leading Japanese chess official Watai, Suzuki said. Fischer, wanted in the United States for allegedly violating international sanctions on the former Yugoslavia, has been fighting attempts to have him deported...

TOKYO (AP) - Former world chess champion Bobby Fischer faxed a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and the U.S. Embassy in Japan on Monday demanding that a consular official accept his renunciation of U.S. citizenship, his Japanese lawyer said. Fischer, wanted in the United States on charges of violating international sanctions on the former Yugoslavia by playing a match there, also plans to marry the president of Japan's chess association, Fischer lawyer Masako Suzuki said. Fischer has been held in Japan since last month for trying to travel on a revoked U.S. passport, and has appealed a...

Russian-born Boris Spassky, an old rival of former world chess champion Bobby Fischer, has called on Washington to show mercy for Fischer, who is wanted by the United States for defying its sanctions, Reuters reported, citing Fischer’s lawyer. In a letter purportedly written by Spassky and made available to the media by Masako Suzuki, a lawyer working on Fischer’s case, Spassky called on U.S. President George W. Bush to be lenient towards Fischer, whom he described as a “tragic personality.” “I would not like to defend or justify Bobby Fischer. He is what he is,” Reuters quoted the letter said....

Former world chess champion Bobby Fischer, wanted by Washington for defying sanctions on Yugoslavia, plans to renounce his U.S. citizenship, a lawyer working on his appeal against deportation from Japan said on Friday. Fischer, one of the chess world's great eccentrics, was detained at Tokyo's Narita airport last month when he tried to leave for Manila on a passport U.S. officials say was invalid. Japanese immigration officials rejected Fischer's initial appeal against deportation and his lawyer, Masako Suzuki, has filed a second plea to Justice Minister Daizo Nozawa. In a handwritten note made available to the media, Fischer, 61, said...

TOKYO - Former world chess champion Bobby Fischer, detained in Japan for allegedly traveling with a revoked U.S. passport, wants to renounce his American citizenship, his lawyer said Friday. Fischer called the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo from detention at Narita airport outside the capital to tell U.S. officials his demands, his lawyer Masako Suzuki told reporters at a news conference. Suzuki said she would submit a letter to the embassy on Fischer's behalf, and an embassy official will meet him to confirm his intentions. "I no longer wish to be an American citizen. Enough is enough," he said in a...

TOKYO - Former world chess champion Bobby Fischer has appealed Japanese plans to deport him to the United States and hopes to find political asylum in a third country, a friends said Wednesday. Fischer was detained by Japanese immigration officials last week after trying to leave the country for the Philippines. Officials say his passport was invalid, and on Tuesday confirmed that he was being processed for deportation. Fischer is wanted in the United States for playing a rematch against Soviet world champion Boris Spassky in Yugoslavia in 1992. Yugoslavia was under international sanctions at the time, and U.S....

July 20, 2004 Japan to deport Bobby Fischer By ERIC TALMADGE NARITA, Japan (AP) - The Japanese government is preparing to deport chess legend Bobby Fischer for staying in this country on an invalid passport, immigration officials said Tuesday. Fischer was detained at the international airport in this city just outside of Tokyo last Tuesday after trying to board a flight for Manila, Philippines. Immigration officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed that Fischer, 61, has been held in their custody since, and said he was being processed for deportation. They refused to give further details, but said he could...

The stunning news of Bobby Fischer's detention in Japan came at a moment in which the American former world chess champion was already very much on my mind. I am currently finishing the fourth of my six-volume series on the game's great players and it is precisely this volume of which Robert James Fischer, forever known as Bobby, is the star. This project has involved going over hundreds of Fischer's chess games in minute detail. It also means trying to understand the man behind the moves and the era in which he made them. Despite his short stay at the...

<p>The chess community in New York expressed mixed views on the arrest in Japan of Bobby Fischer, the Brooklyn-raised reclusive former world chess champion, on charges of traveling on a revoked U.S. passport.</p> <p>Fischer, 61, was arrested last week by Japanese immigration officials as he tried to fly out of Tokyo's Narita Airport to the Philippines using a passport that the U.S. government reportedly revoked last year.</p>

Search for Bobby Fischer Ends at Japanese Airport, With Fugitive Chess King Captured Eric Talmadge/Associated Press TOKYO (AP) - In a bizarre end game, Bobby Fischer - the chess world's most eccentric star - was taken into custody after trying to fly out of Japan with an invalid passport. Checkmate. Wanted at home for attending a 1992 match in Yugoslavia despite international sanctions, the American former world champion had managed to stay one move ahead of the law by living abroad and being sheltered by chess devotees. It was not immediately clear if Fischer would be handed over to the...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US State Department was tightlipped on the fate of former world chess champion Bobby Fischer, detained in Japan and wanted on a 12-year-old US warrant charging him with violating an international commercial embargo on the former Yugoslavia. "There's a limit to what I can say about the situation of Mr Fischer because of the Privacy Act," spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters. "We don't have permission in terms of a Privacy Act waiver to release any further information on Mr Fischer." The Privacy Act gives persons in custody the option, before they are formally charged, of having...

Japanese Immigration Officials Detain Former World Chess Champ Bobby Fischer at Tokyo Airport Former world chess champion Bobby Fischer, wanted since 1992 for playing a tournament in Yugoslavia despite U.N. sanctions, was detained in Japan for an apparent passport violation and will be deported to the United States, media reports said. Fischer, was stopped at Tokyo's Narita International Airport on Tuesday as he tried to go to the Philippines, an airport official said on condition of anonymity. The Kyodo News agency said he was detained for allegedly using an invalid U.S. passport. Kyodo and the Asahi newspaper reported officials were...

It is unlikely that a man stranger and more mysterious than the American Bobby Fischer ever was, is or will ever appear in the chess world. He is a man about whom legends are composed already during his life. But it is more frequent that no news is available about Fischer at all. The man is elusive. Nobody can say for sure where Bobby Fischer has been living within over the past decades, or whether he is still alive at all. He was to celebrate his 60th birthday this March. The great chess player is some a kind of a...