Chess master Fischer may file U.S. lawsuit
Mon 18 October, 2004 10:46
By Masayuki Kitano
TOKYO (Reuters) - 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 says.
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.
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
As anybody knows, handing your case over to lawyers and litigating the government produces nothing but endless misery, sort of like a hell on earth. You spend the rest of your life in court, conclusions are never reached while each side wends the corridors of the international and national legal labyrinth. Sort of like K's case in Kafka's The Trial. I don't think Fischer will live long enough for this to reach a verdict.