Former world chess champion Bobby Fischer appealed to US Secretary of State Colin Powell yesterday to help him renounce US citizenship as he announced plans to marry a leading Japanese chess official, his lawyer said.
Fischer, wanted in the US for allegedly violating international sanctions on the former Yugosla-via, was detained in Japan last month when trying to travel on a revoked US passport. He has been fighting attempts to have him deported to the US.
Fischer's attorney, Masako Suzuki, said she faxed a letter to Powell and the US Embassy in Japan demanding that a US consular officer be sent to the chess great's detention center to accept his renunciation of US citizenship.
In the letter, Suzuki accused the embassy of refusing to send an official to Fischer, requiring him to come to the embassy in person. Japanese officials, however, will not allow him to make the trip, she said.
"Although renouncing US citizenship is a legal right ..., the US Embassy in Japan has made it impossible for Mr. Fischer to exercise his right," said the letter, which was also faxed to news organizations in Japan.
A separate statement from Suzuki also said Fischer and Japan Chess Association president Miyoko Watai had signed marriage papers that was to be submitted later yesterday.
It was unclear whether Japan-ese officials would accept the marriage application. A Tokyo ward official, Yoshihisa Yabe, said a person in Fischer's situation would have to either provide a valid US passport or a US government document confirming his citizenship's validity in order to get married in Japan.
It was also not immediately clear whether marriage to a Japan-ese citizen would affect attempts to deport him to the US. Suzuki said Fischer and Watai had been living together since 2000.
Fischer became an American icon when, at the height of the Cold War, he defeated Boris Spassky of the Soviet Union in a series of games in Iceland, in 1972.
He lost his title as world champion in 1978 and then largely vanished from the public eye until he reappeared to play a rematch in the former Yugoslavia against Spassky in 1992. Though Fischer won, and took home more than US$3 million in prize money, he played in violation of UN sanctions and has been wanted in the US ever since.
Fischer's renunciation of his US citizenship could possibly leave him without a country to call his own, Suzuki has said, adding that he had plans to apply for refugee status with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.
Incumbent Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa on Sunday claimed a runaway victory in the nation’s presidential election, after voters endorsed the young leader’s “iron fist” approach to rampant cartel violence. With more than 90 percent of the votes counted, the National Election Council said Noboa had an unassailable 12-point lead over his leftist rival Luisa Gonzalez. Official results showed Noboa with 56 percent of the vote, against Gonzalez’s 44 percent — a far bigger winning margin than expected after a virtual tie in the first round. Speaking to jubilant supporters in his hometown of Olon, the 37-year-old president claimed a “historic victory.” “A huge hug
Two Belgian teenagers on Tuesday were charged with wildlife piracy after they were found with thousands of ants packed in test tubes in what Kenyan authorities said was part of a trend in trafficking smaller and lesser-known species. Lornoy David and Seppe Lodewijckx, two 19-year-olds who were arrested on April 5 with 5,000 ants at a guest house, appeared distraught during their appearance before a magistrate in Nairobi and were comforted in the courtroom by relatives. They told the magistrate that they were collecting the ants for fun and did not know that it was illegal. In a separate criminal case, Kenyan Dennis
A judge in Bangladesh issued an arrest warrant for the British member of parliament and former British economic secretary to the treasury Tulip Siddiq, who is a niece of former Bangladeshi prime minister Sheikh Hasina, who was ousted in August last year in a mass uprising that ended her 15-year rule. The Bangladeshi Anti-Corruption Commission has been investigating allegations against Siddiq that she and her family members, including Hasina, illegally received land in a state-owned township project near Dhaka, the capital. Senior Special Judge of Dhaka Metropolitan Zakir Hossain passed the order on Sunday, after considering charges in three separate cases filed
APPORTIONING BLAME: The US president said that there were ‘millions of people dead because of three people’ — Vladimir Putin, Joe Biden and Volodymyr Zelenskiy US President Donald Trump on Monday resumed his attempts to blame Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy for Russia’s invasion, falsely accusing him of responsibility for “millions” of deaths. Trump — who had a blazing public row in the Oval Office with Zelenskiy six weeks ago — said the Ukranian shared the blame with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who ordered the February 2022 invasion, and then-US president Joe Biden. Trump told reporters that there were “millions of people dead because of three people.” “Let’s say Putin No. 1, but let’s say Biden, who had no idea what the hell he was doing, No. 2, and
RSS