March 25, 2005
REYKJAVIK, Iceland (AP) - Bobby Fischer met the press Friday,
his hair and beard neatly trimmed but still bristling with
strong opinions. On his first full day of freedom, he declared
he was finished with a chess world he called corrupt.
Fischer said he was happy to be in Iceland, which granted him
citizenship to pave the way for his release from detention in
Japan, where he was held on a U.S. extradition warrant.
In a rambling news conference at his hotel, the combative
Fischer sparred with U.S. journalists who asked about his
anti-American tirades.
"The United States is evil," Fischer retorted. "They talk about
the axis of evil. What about the allies of evil . . . the United
States, England, Japan, Australia? These are the evildoers."
He thanked his "wonderful friends" in Iceland but said the
country's enthusiasm for chess "was misplaced, because people
don't know how utterly corrupt it is, and has been for many
years."
Declaring that he was "finished" with chess, Fischer added: "I
don't play the old chess. But obviously if I did, I would be the
best."
Fischer was freed early Thursday after nine months' detention in
Japan, where he had been held by authorities for trying to leave
the country using an invalid U.S. passport. Japan agreed to
release him after he accepted Iceland's offer of citizenship.
His fiancee, Miyoko Watai, the head of Japan's chess
association, accompanied him to Iceland.
During his long flight from Tokyo to Copenhagen, where he
stopped before catching a chartered jet from a small airport in
southern Sweden, Fischer railed against the governments of Japan
and the United States, calling Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro
Koizumi "mentally ill" and a "stooge" of U.S. President George
W. Bush.
"This was a kidnapping because the charges that the Japanese
charged me with are totally nonsense," he told Associated Press
Television News on the flight to Copenhagen.
An American chess champion at 14 and a grand master at 15, the
enigmatic, eccentric Fischer has long had a reputation for
volatility and a troubled relationship with the United States.
On Friday, he again declared himself an unrepentant enemy of the
"hypocritical and corrupt" United States, which he claims
organized his "judicial kidnapping."
"They decided Fischer had to go to prison. He had to be
destroyed . . . they decided to cook up whatever charges they
cooked up," he told reporters.
Fischer, whose mother was Jewish but who has a history of
anti-Semitic outbursts, accused "the Jew-controlled U.S.
government" of ruining his life.
Fischer, 62, is wanted by the United States for violating
sanctions imposed on the former Yugoslavia by playing an
exhibition match against Russian Boris Spassky there in 1992. He
had fought deportation since being detained by Japanese
officials last July, and at one point said he wanted to become a
German citizen.
After a nine-month tussle between Fischer and Japanese
authorities, Iceland's parliament stepped in this week to break
the standoff by offering Fischer citizenship.
Fischer is a popular figure in Iceland, the site of his most
famous match - the 1972 world championship victory over Spassky
that was the highlight of Fischer's career and a world-gripping
symbol of Cold War rivalry.
"Even though I don't know him personally, I have the feeling of
knowing him through his biography of chess, his games," said
Magnus Skulason, an Icelandic psychiatrist and chess enthusiast
who went to the airport to greet Fischer. "It was hard to think
of him going to jail for many years."
This country of fewer than 300,000 people is a staunch U.S.
ally, but there is a strong undercurrent of public anger at the
government's support for the U.S.-led Iraq war, opposed by
four-fifths of Icelanders.
Iceland's ambassador to Japan, Thordur Oskarsson, said
Washington sent a "message of disappointment" to the Icelandic
government at its decision to grant Fischer a passport. The
United States has an extradition treaty with Iceland, and could
still try to have Fischer deported.
If convicted of violating U.S. sanctions imposed to punish
then-Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic, Fischer could face
10 years in prison and a $250,000 US fine.
His Icelandic supporters vow that won't happen. "I think he is
safe now," said Thorstein Matthiasson, 39. "We have more courage
than the Japanese." |
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