Chess legend Bobby Fischer walked free yesterday from a Japanese detention center and immediately departed on a plane for his new home, Iceland, following a nine-month standoff with Tokyo officials trying to deport him to the US.
Fischer, sporting a long, gray beard, jeans and a baseball cap pulled down low over his face, left the immigration detention center on Tokyo's outskirts early yesterday morning.
Japanese immigration officials released the eccentric chess icon after taking him into custody in July, when he tried to leave the country using an invalid US passport.
As he was taken yesterday to the airport in a black limousine provided by the Icelandic Embassy, his vehicle was mobbed by a few dozen immigration officials, photographers and reporters.
Fischer was accompanied by his fiancee, Miyoko Watai -- the head of Japan's chess association -- and Iceland's ambassador to Japan Thordur Oskarsson. Fischer and Watai caught an afternoon flight to Denmark en route to Iceland.
Fischer was characteristically defiant as he arrived at the airport and spoke briefly to reporters.
"I won't be free until I get out of Japan. This was not an arrest. It was a kidnapping cooked up by Bush and Koizumi," he said, referring to US President George W. Bush and Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.
"They are war criminals and should be hung," he said.
As he walked toward the airport entrance, he turned, unzipped his pants and acted like he was going to urinate on the wall.
Fischer, detained since his arrest, claims his US passport was revoked illegally and sued to block a deportation order to the US, where he is wanted for violating sanctions imposed on the former Yugoslavia by playing an exhibition match against Russian Boris Spassky in 1992.
This week, Iceland's Parliament stepped in to break the standoff, giving Fischer citizenship. Iceland is where he won the world championship in 1972, defeating Spassky in a classic Cold War showdown that propelled him to international stardom.
Fischer, 62, could still face extradition to the US -- Iceland, like Japan, has an extradition treaty with Washington.
Ambassador Oskarsson had said before Fischer's release that Washington sent a "message of disappointment" to the Icelandic government over giving Fischer citizenship.
"Despite the message, the decision was put through Parliament on humanitarian grounds," Oskarsson said.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS