Supporters of chess master Bobby Fischer petitioned a Japanese court on Wednesday to free him immediately and let him go to Iceland where he’s been granted residency rather than deport him to the United States where he’s a wanted man.
Fischer has suffered headaches during his six-month detention in Japan and shouts ”Get me out!” when people visit him, said fiancee Miyoko Watai, a Japanese whom Fischer applied to marry while in detention.
”It’s not fair. It’s not freedom,” Watai said.
Japan has ordered Fischer (61) deported to the United States to faces charges of violating international sanctions against the former Yugoslavia, for playing chess there in 1992.
The former chess champion has been detained in Tokyo since he was arrested six months ago for trying to board a plane to the Philippines with an invalid US passport.
Watai and Fischer supporter John Bosnitch filed a habeas corpus petition Wednesday, asking Japan to immediately free Fischer so he can leave for Iceland.
Fischer is also requesting that Iceland grant him citizenship, Bosnitch and Fischer’s legal team said on Wednesday. Citizenship would boost chances that Japan would send him there rather than to the United States, the attorneys said.
Last month, Iceland agreed to allow Fischer’s entry without a passport and gave him a residence permit. Iceland is the site of Fischer’s greatest chess victory, the 1972 match against Soviet chess champion Boris Spassky.
Watai, who visits Fischer every day, said he is locked in his cell most of the day and gets fresh air 45 minutes a day. He feels dizzy and suffers headaches, she said.
” ‘Get me out, get me out. Tomorrow, or this week.’ Every time, he shouts like that,” Watai told reporters at the Foreign Correspondents Club in Tokyo.
The court filing follows a stalemate in his immigration case.
His lawyers fought the deportation order before Iceland’s decision last month to accept Fischer. Now, the legal team wants to drop the fight against deportation, but wants Fischer to leave for Iceland, rather than the United States.
At a hearing in Tokyo District Court on Wednesday, Tsuyoshi Satake, the attorney for Japanese immigration authorities, refused to answer questions from Fischer’s lawyers about allowing his departure for Iceland, saying the original court case could not be dropped and must be heard.
Judge Toshihiko Tsuruoka said there was no precedent for arguing over a destination of a deportation order. The next hearing was scheduled for February 1. – Sapa-AP