Fischer fights Japan deportation

Former world chess champion Bobby Fischer has asked to be released from custody at a Tokyo detention centre while he appeals against a Japanese move to deport him, a Canadian advising Fischer said on Wednesday.

Fischer, 61, wanted by Washington for defying sanctions by playing a match in Yugoslavia in 1992, was detained at Tokyo's Narita airport on July 15 when he tried to leave for the Philippines on a passport U.S. officials have said was invalid.

"He has asked for provisional release, which is discretionary, but which we would hope for immediately," John Bosnitch, a Tokyo-based communications consultant and journalist, told .

A Japanese immigration official said Fischer could be held for up to 60 days while his appeal was heard, after which period detainees must be released but stay in Japan to attend hearings.

Complex cases could take up to six months, but Fischer's case was unlikely to drag on that long, the official added.

Fischer, one of the great eccentrics of the chess world, has been wanted for arrest by the United States since 1992 when he played a match against old rival Boris Spassky -- and won -- in Yugoslavia despite U.S. economic sanctions.

Fischer arrived in Japan in April, unaware that his passport had been revoked last December, Miyoko Watai of the Japan Chess Association, a friend of Fischer, told Reuters last week.

Bosnitch, who offered to advise Fischer after he heard his "boyhood hero" had been detained, said the former chess champion maintained that his passport had never been properly revoked.

"He was visiting friends in Japan, as in the past. He did not have any information to even suggest that the U.S. might want to revoke his passport and to this day has not received any such written notice," Bosnitch said.

POLITICAL ASYLUM?

Bosnitch said he had urged Fischer to consult a lawyer.

"Until now, Bobby Fischer has not engaged a lawyer because he is saying, 'I don't want to dignify this kidnapping by making it look like it is a legal proceeding'," Bosnitch said.

In a July 15 statement on his web site, Fischer said he did not wish to return to the United States, where he could face prison or a fine, and was seeking an offer of political asylum from a third country.

An embassy spokesman said a U.S. consular official had met Fischer at the detention centre and that his passport had been returned to the embassy by the Japanese government since it had been revoked. He declined further comment on the case.

A Narita immigration official denied allegations by Fischer on his web site that he had been mistreated when he was detained.

Fischer won the world chess title in 1972, beating Spassky of the Soviet Union in Reykjavik, Iceland, in a victory seen as something of a Cold War propaganda coup for the United States.

He lost the title in 1975 after his conditions for a match against Anatoly Karpov, also of the Soviet Union, were rejected by chess officials. Karpov became champion by default.

Fischer disappeared until the 1992 match against Spassky, whom he again defeated, taking $3 million in prize money.

He then disappeared again, resurfacing after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States to give an interview to Philippines radio praising the strikes.

Fischer, whose mother was Jewish, has also stirred controversy with anti-Semitic remarks.

(Additional reporting by Teruaki Ueno)</p>