Mon 18 October, 2004
By Masayuki Kitano
TOKYO (Reuters) - Former world
chess champion Bobby Fischer, wanted by
Washington and detained in
Japan since
July, may file a lawsuit in the
United States on the grounds that the executive order he violated by
playing chess in Yugoslavia in 1992 was unconstitutional, his U.S.
lawyer says.
Fischer, 61, has been held in Japan since July when he was stopped at
Tokyo's Narita airport for traveling on a passport U.S. officials said
was invalid.
Fischer is wanted for violating international economic sanctions by
playing a chess match in
Yugoslavia in 1992 in which he beat old rival
Boris Spassky and earned $3 million.
"There are some grotesque abuses of governmental power, violations of
due process and human rights and I would say an utter waste of U.S.
taxpayer money in prosecuting Bobby Fischer, a chess player," Fischer's
U.S. lawyer, Richard Vattuone, told a news conference in Tokyo.
Vattuone said Fischer could file a lawsuit in federal court in the
United States challenging the
constitutionality of a U.S. executive
order concerning sanctions on Yugoslavia and a related criminal statute,
as well as the revocation of his U.S. passport.
"A lawsuit could be filed challenging the constitutionality of the
executive order," said Vattuone, a civil rights lawyer who was appointed
as Fischer's U.S. lawyer last week.
The lawsuit could be filed within a year, depending on the actions of
the U.S. State Department, he said, adding that there would be no
lawsuit if it agrees that the revocation of Fischer's passport was
improper.
Vattuone, who met Fischer for the first time last week at an immigration
facility where he is being held, represented the chess grandmaster at a
hearing with U.S. officials held at the facility on Friday regarding the
revocation of his passport.
Vattuone said he was given only two minutes to meet with Fischer in
private ahead of the hearing, and added that he wasn't allowed to cross
examine witnesses at the hearing.
Last month, Fischer won a delay in efforts to deport him from Japan when
a Japanese court granted an injunction preventing Fischer from being
deported until it had ruled on his lawsuit seeking to have a deportation
order quashed.
Fischer had appealed after Japanese authorities ordered him to be
deported.
Fischer, one of the chess world's great eccentrics, has made several
other moves to avoid deportation, including a request for refugee status
in Japan and plans to renounce his U.S. citizenship and marry a Japanese
woman.
FIGHT TO THE END
Vattuone said Fischer seemed to be holding up well despite three months
in detention.
"Bobby Fischer is in great spirits and he's determined to prevail,"
Vattuone said.
Vattuone, who said Fischer had been one of his heroes when he was a
teenager, said he was optimistic that Fischer would be vindicated.
"I'm very optimistic that at some level, even if it's the
United States
Supreme Court, that Bobby Fischer will be fully vindicated," Vattuone
said.
Fischer rose to fame in 1972 when he beat Spassky of the
Soviet Union to
become world chess champion, a victory touted as a
Cold War propaganda
coup for the United States.
He lost the title three years later after refusing to defend his crown
against Anatoly Karpov, also of the Soviet Union. Karpov became champion
by default.
Fischer vanished after the 1992 match but resurfaced after the
September
11, 2001, attacks on the United States to praise the strikes in an
interview with a
Philippine radio station.
Fischer, born to a Jewish mother, has also stirred controversy with
anti-Semitic remarks.