Checkmate -- has chess king Bobby Fischer met his match?:
"Tokyo -- For 12 years he has stayed one move ahead of the U.S. government he despises, always in motion, hard to corner. But U.S. justice may have finally caught up with Bobby Fischer.
Wanted for defying a U.S. ban on doing business with Yugoslavia in 1992, the onetime world chess champion was arrested by Japanese officials this week as he tried to fly out of Tokyo's Narita airport. Fischer, who was headed to the Philippines, stands accused by the Japanese of traveling on a revoked U.S. passport.
The man often said to possess the world's most brilliant chess mind -- and a great eccentric in a profession bulging with them -- now sits in jail facing deportation and subsequent arrest by U.S. marshals as early as Sunday. ......
The U.S. case against him stems from his out-of-retirement exhibition battle with former rival Boris Spassky in 1992, which led to a $3.5 million payday for Fischer. Staged in Yugoslavia, a federation unraveling in civil war, his appearance violated U.N. sanctions and an embargo on doing business in the Balkan country.
But Fischer's quarrel with Washington runs far deeper than his refusal to abide by the ban. On his Web site and in radio interviews delivered from various points of exile, Fischer has become known as an intemperate critic of Washington, his philosophy punctuated by ferocious anti-Jewish diatribes, despite the fact that his mother was Jewish.
His rages from the fringe culminated in a notorious interview on Philippine radio on Sept. 11, 2001, in which he exulted in the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. He praised the horrific events as 'wonderful news,' declaring that America got what it deserved for supporting Israel.
'I want to see the U.S. wiped out,' he said.
Fischer has kept up the drumbeat ever since, and Watai believes it is his verbal attacks that have stirred up U.S. authorities. The chess master has been reclusive but hardly impossible to find in recent years. His peripatetic lifestyle -- shuttling between his base in Tokyo and outposts in, among other places, Hungary and the Philippines -- implies that he frequently passes through immigration controls.
Going along unimpeded, he bragged in 2002 that the 'U.S. hasn't got the guts to catch me.'"
"Tokyo -- For 12 years he has stayed one move ahead of the U.S. government he despises, always in motion, hard to corner. But U.S. justice may have finally caught up with Bobby Fischer.
Wanted for defying a U.S. ban on doing business with Yugoslavia in 1992, the onetime world chess champion was arrested by Japanese officials this week as he tried to fly out of Tokyo's Narita airport. Fischer, who was headed to the Philippines, stands accused by the Japanese of traveling on a revoked U.S. passport.
The man often said to possess the world's most brilliant chess mind -- and a great eccentric in a profession bulging with them -- now sits in jail facing deportation and subsequent arrest by U.S. marshals as early as Sunday. ......
The U.S. case against him stems from his out-of-retirement exhibition battle with former rival Boris Spassky in 1992, which led to a $3.5 million payday for Fischer. Staged in Yugoslavia, a federation unraveling in civil war, his appearance violated U.N. sanctions and an embargo on doing business in the Balkan country.
But Fischer's quarrel with Washington runs far deeper than his refusal to abide by the ban. On his Web site and in radio interviews delivered from various points of exile, Fischer has become known as an intemperate critic of Washington, his philosophy punctuated by ferocious anti-Jewish diatribes, despite the fact that his mother was Jewish.
His rages from the fringe culminated in a notorious interview on Philippine radio on Sept. 11, 2001, in which he exulted in the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. He praised the horrific events as 'wonderful news,' declaring that America got what it deserved for supporting Israel.
'I want to see the U.S. wiped out,' he said.
Fischer has kept up the drumbeat ever since, and Watai believes it is his verbal attacks that have stirred up U.S. authorities. The chess master has been reclusive but hardly impossible to find in recent years. His peripatetic lifestyle -- shuttling between his base in Tokyo and outposts in, among other places, Hungary and the Philippines -- implies that he frequently passes through immigration controls.
Going along unimpeded, he bragged in 2002 that the 'U.S. hasn't got the guts to catch me.'"
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