Jailed chess genius Bobby Fischer's fiancé made an impassioned plea for his
freedom Tuesday, hours after his lawyers fired the first shots aimed at quashing
a deportation order issued against him months ago.
"(Fischer) has come to Japan on a proper passport, and done absolutely nothing
wrong under Japanese
law," Miyoko Watai, Fischer's betrothed and a Japanese women's chess champion
herself, told a news conference.
"I want him to hurry up and get provisional release and hurry up and come back
home to me so we can get things back like they were as soon as possible."
Fischer is languishing in the East Japan Immigration Bureau Detention Center in
Ushiku, Ibaraki Prefecture, while he fights deportation to the United States,
where he is charged with violating an Executive Order by playing chess in
Yugoslavia in
1992 while that country
was under economic sanctions.
Fischer's Japanese lawyers appeared at the
Tokyo District Court
Tuesday in the first hearing in their request to have quashed the deportation
order issued against Fischer on Aug. 24.
They exchanged documents with prosecution lawyers and Presiding Judge Toshiko
Koga set the date for the next hearing in the case for Jan. 19.
Fischer was arrested July 13 at Narita Airport for trying to use a passport the
U.S. argues it had revoked, but the grandmaster felt was perfectly valid as he
was only informed it was invalid after he was taken into custody.
Masako Suzuki, Fischer's lawyer, said detention center officials have twice
refused her client's requests for provisional release, the equivalent of bail,
but the chess champion has a third application pending.
Supporters argued that Fischer's long-term incarceration was starting to eat
away at the former World Chess Champion.
"He's getting frustrated and I think he has very good grounds for it," John
Bosnitch, head of the Committee to Free Bobby Fischer said, saying that the
chess great had complained about noisy inmates in surrounding cells, the sudden
transfer of a Peruvian detainee with whom he had been close and the center's
close proximity to Tokai, the site of Japan's worst nuclear accident in 1999,
which is just 50 kilometers away.
Watai agreed. "He's not normal," she said, adding that Fischer's ill ease at his
"unfair detention" was placing their marriage in jeopardy.
Officials from the Justice Ministry's Legal Affairs Bureau are due to meet
Fischer on Friday to interview him about his planned union with Watai. He is
bitterly opposed to the meeting, though Bosnitch told the Mainichi he and Watai
would try to convince Fischer to meet the officials.
Watai admitted to her relationship being placed under enormous strain by the
demands made on it through Fischer's detention. She said she spends 2 1/2 hours
daily and considerable expense traveling to Ushiku to meet her lover, spends up
to two hours waiting for a chance to meet him, then must sit in a tiny room
separated by glass panels and monitor by detention center guards when she does
get time to talk to Fischer.
She said their conversations are limited to 30 minutes, but have recently been
shortened at times to 20 minutes because of the large number of people visiting
detainees at Ushiku. Watai added that she soon should be able to have one-on-one
meetings with Fischer.
"Sometimes I think I shouldn't go. Then he'll call me asking if I'm coming,"
Watai said. "I know he's really depending on me." (Mainichi Daily News, Nov. 2,
2004)