Chess legend renounces U.S. status
TOKYO, Japan -- Former world chess champion Bobby Fischer has told U.S. authorities he wants to renounce his American citizenship.
Japanese authorities detained Fischer at Tokyo's Narita International Airport in July on charges of traveling with a revoked U.S. passport after he tried to board a fight to the Philippines.
The 61-year-old is wanted in the United States for attending a 1992 chess match in the former Yugoslavia in violation of international sanctions.
Fischer -- who became known for expressing extremist political viewpoints and anti-Semitic sentiments -- filed for refugee status in his fight against a deportation order to the United States.
Japanese officials rejected Fischer's initial appeal last week and his lawyer, Masako Suzuki, has made a second plea to Justice Minister Daizo Nozawa.
"He decided to renounce his U.S. citizenship and phoned the U.S. embassy," Suzuki told a news conference on Friday.
Fischer will likely become a stateless person for some time, Reuters reported Suzuki as saying. His supporters will try to get him registered as a refugee at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
Suzuki has said Fischer has complained of rough treatment during his detention, and says he has not seen the sun or been allowed to exercise since he was detained.
She also said he has complained of being subjected to second-hand smoke.
Fischer became a chess grandmaster at age 15 and was considered something of a Cold War hero when he outplayed Russian Boris Spassky to win the world title in 1972.
He was world champion until 1975 when he forfeited the title and withdrew from the tournament because conditions he demanded proved unacceptable to the International Chess Federation.
Since then, he virtually disappeared, living in secret outside the United States and dodging authorities.
But he re-emerged in 1992 to play a highly publicized match against Spassky in the former Yugoslavia.
Fischer won that competition 10-5 and pocketed a prize of $3.35 million.
But the U.S. government accused him of violating U.N. sanctions against Yugoslavia by playing the match there.
Those sanctions were in place for provoking warfare in neighboring Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Copyright 2004 CNN. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Associated Press contributed to this report.
