BOBBY FISCHER, the former world chess champion, was last night fighting a legal battle to prevent his immediate deportation to the United States where he faces a ten-year prison sentence.
Japanese lawyers acting for Mr Fischer believe that they have won a last-minute delay on a deportation order presented to him yesterday afternoon at an immigration detention facility north of Tokyo.
Officials were threatening to put him on a plane to the US last night when his lawyers filed a suit in the Tokyo District Court to block the deportation order.
“The court will now typically take about one month to consider the written request. We can expect it to take up to one year for the entire lawsuit to be dealt with,” said John Bosnitch, head of the Committee to Free Bobby Fischer (CFBF) in Tokyo.
“We are continuing this battle on every front.”
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Mr Fischer has been held for almost six weeks after immigration officers at Tokyo’s Narita airport seized his American passport, which had been revoked by the US authorities.
The former world champion is wanted for breaching US sanctions in 1992 by playing a chess game in the former Yugoslavia against his old Russian rival, Boris Spassky.
But he insists that he is being persecuted for political reasons — his frequent and furious expressions of hatred against the US Government, the Israeli state and Jews everywhere.
In his most notorious outburst, on the evening of September 11, 2001, he praised the terrorist attacks against the US and expressed hopes that they would be followed by a military coup against the Government and the execution of “several hundred thousand” Jews.
With the help of a small group of supporters, lawyers, and a Japanese woman who claims to be his fiancée, he has fought his deportation tooth and nail.
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But yesterday two important legal escape routes were blocked by the Japanese authorities.
Daizo Nozawa, the Justice Minister, rejected his second and final appeal against the deportation as well as his claim to political asylum as a refugee.
“Bobby violated those sanctions (against Yugoslavia) as a political statement,” Mr Bosnitch said yesterday.
“He could have played Spassky in any place of his choosing — the decision to play in Yugoslavia was entirely political in nature and Bobby Fischer is appealing the decision to reject his refugee claim.”
He added: “The (immigration) officials held up a kind of dog-tag identification badge and told Bobby, ‘This is what you will have to wear on your neck on your flight to the United States.’
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“Even if he is not deported, their intentional verbal threat constitutes cruel psychological intimidation and abuse.”
But the CFBF team has not exhausted all its options.
Already under way is a bid to register Mr Fischer as a German citizen, based on his father’s nationality.
Then there is his engagement to Miyoko Watai, head of the Japanese Chess Association, who previously described herself as a friend of Fischer.
Last week, however, she announced that the two had been living together for four years and intended to marry — although registration of their nuptials has been stymied by the US Embassy’s confiscation of the groom’s passport.
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Despite the vehemence of his anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism, Mr Fischer has attracted a surprising amount of support.
Even his old rival, Boris Spassky, wrote to President Bush to plead on his behalf. “Bobby and myself committed the same crime,” he wrote a fortnight ago.
“Arrest me. And put me in the same cell with Bobby Fischer. And give us a chess set.”
THE MOVES