- Bobby Fischer, the American former world chess champion,
fears that he will be "tried convicted, sentenced, imprisoned, tortured
and murdered" when Japan deports him to America.
-
- In a characteristically eccentric interview with a Philippines
radio station, Fischer said Japan, his home for the past three years, was
guilty of a "vicious betrayal" after he lost his legal battle
against deportation last week.
-
- He faces a 10-year prison sentence in the United States
for violating international sanctions in 1992 by playing a chess game in
the former Yugoslavia against his long-time Russian rival, Boris Spassky.
-
- Fischer, 61, has been held in a Tokyo jail for six weeks
after immigration officers at Narita airport seized his passport, which
had been revoked by the US authorities.
-
- "They are preparing to deport me to the US to be
murdered," Fischer told Bombo Radyo in a rambling telephone interview.
"They stabbed me in the back.
-
- "I spent $350,000 [£190,000] here in Japan.
I gave them my time, I gave them my money, spent a fortune going to Japanese
mineral baths. But just one call from the US embassy and they are sending
me to prison in the US to die."
-
- Fischer believes that he is being persecuted on political
grounds. He is renowned for his virulent anti-Semitic and anti-American
outbursts, most notoriously praising the terrorist attacks on New York
and Washington on the evening of September 11, 2001.
-
- Despite his views, he still has many supporters. Spassky
recently wrote to President George W Bush to plead on his old foe's behalf.
"We committed the same crime," he wrote. "Arrest me. And
put me in the same cell with Bobby Fischer. And give us a chess set."
-
- Asked about the letter, Fischer - who recently announced
his engagement to Miyoko Watai, the head of the Japanese Chess Association
- responded in combative vein. "I saw it, I didn't like it,"
he declared. "I didn't like the tone - he was trying to make me sound
like a weirdie. I don't want Spassky in my cell. I want a chick."
-
- The wide-ranging interview covered his fears about nuclear
power and his memories of a former classmate, Barbra Streisand. "I
remember some mousy-looking girl... Maybe that was her."
-
- Asked whether he would like to return to America if permission
were ever granted, he said: "No, not at all. You know, apart from
the corruption, the steroids in the meat, the pollution, it's just a boring,
empty country. It has no culture, no flavour, no taste."
-
- © Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2004.
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- http://telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/08/2
9/wbobby29.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/08/29/ixworld.html
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