Former world chess champion Bobby Fischer, wanted by Washington and detained in Japan since July, may file a lawsuit in the United States on the grounds that the executive order he violated by playing chess in Yugoslavia in 1992 was unconstitutional, his U.S. lawyer said on Monday.
Fischer, 61, has been held in Japan since July when he was stopped at Tokyo’s Narita airport for travelling on a passport U.S. officials said was invalid.
Fischer is wanted for violating international economic sanctions by playing a chess match in Yugoslavia in 1992 in which he beat old rival Boris Spassky and earned $3 million.
“There are some grotesque abuses of governmental power, violations of due process and human rights and I would say an utter waste of U.S. taxpayer money in prosecuting Bobby Fischer, a chess player,” Fischer’s U.S. lawyer, Richard Vattuone, told a news conference in Tokyo.
Constitutional appeal
Vattuone said Fischer could file a lawsuit in federal court in the United States challenging the constitutionality of a U.S. executive order concerning sanctions on Yugoslavia and a related criminal statute, as well as the revocation of his U.S. passport.
“A lawsuit could be filed challenging the constitutionality of the executive order,” said Vattuone, a civil rights lawyer who was appointed as Fischer’s U.S. lawyer last week.
The lawsuit could be filed within a year, depending on the actions of the U.S. State Department, he said, adding that there would be no lawsuit if it agrees that the revocation of Fischer’s passport was improper.
Vattuone, who met Fischer for the first time last week at an immigration facility where he is being held, represented the chess grandmaster at a hearing with U.S. officials held at the facility on Friday regarding the revocation of his passport.
Vattuone said he was given only two minutes to meet with Fischer in private ahead of the hearing, and added that he wasn’t allowed to cross examine witnesses at the hearing.
Last month, Fischer won a delay in efforts to deport him from Japan when a Japanese court granted an injunction preventing Fischer from being deported until it had ruled on his lawsuit seeking to have a deportation order quashed.
Fischer had appealed after Japanese authorities ordered him to be deported.
Fischer, one of the chess world’s great eccentrics, has made several other moves to avoid deportation, including a request for refugee status in Japan and plans to renounce his U.S. citizenship and marry a Japanese woman.
Fight to the end
Vattuone said Fischer seemed to be holding up well despite three months in detention.
“Bobby Fischer is in great spirits and he’s determined to prevail,” Vattuone said.
Vattuone, who said Fischer had been one of his heroes when he was a teenager, said he was optimistic that Fischer would be vindicated.
“I’m very optimistic that at some level, even if it’s the United States Supreme Court, that Bobby Fischer will be fully vindicated,” Vattuone said.
Fischer rose to fame in 1972 when he beat Spassky of the Soviet Union to become world chess champion, a victory touted as a Cold War propaganda coup for the United States.
He lost the title three years later after refusing to defend his crown against Anatoly Karpov, also of the Soviet Union. Karpov became champion by default.
Fischer vanished after the 1992 match but resurfaced after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States to praise the strikes in an interview with a Philippine radio station.
Fischer, born to a Jewish mother, has also stirred controversy with anti-Semitic remarks.