Posted 05:32pm (Mla time) Mar 09, 2005
Agence France-Presse
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TOKYO -- US chess legend Bobby Fischer turned 62
Wednesday, with his supporters celebrating his birthday
at a Japanese immigration detention center.
His Japanese fiancee Miyoko Watai and supporters from
Iceland visited him at the center in the eastern Japan
city of Ushiku, said John Bosnitch, who has led a
campaign to free Fischer.
"They cannot bring food or give him a cake or anything,"
Bosnitch told AFP.
Fischer's lawyer Masako Suzuki is still waiting for the
Japanese justice ministry to respond to applications and
pleas to set him free, Bosnitch said.
"So far, she has heard nothing," he said.
Fischer has been detained since July, when he attempted
to fly out of Japan apparently on an invalid US
passport. He faces a 10-year jail term in the United
States for defying sanctions imposed against the former
Yugoslavia with a 1992 chess match.
Since then Iceland has offered him residency and
passport, inviting the chess champion to live in the
country.
prolonged detention by Japan is illegal and Fischer must
be set free, his lawyers have said repeatedly.
Fischer's supporters said the chess legend was being
targeted for his political views despite once being
lauded as an American hero for his 1972 triumph in
Iceland against the Soviet Boris Spassky.
Fischer went on Filipino radio on September 11, 2001 to
hail the "wonderful news" of the terrorist attacks on
New York and Washington, and then launched into an
anti-Jewish tirade.
Unless Japan frees Fischer, his supporters said they
would launch a global campaign against Japan over its
human rights records, aimed at ruining Japan's cherished
dream of a seat on the UN Security Council.
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