Home > Fischer says he isn’t U.S. citizen anymore; takes case to court
Fischer says he isn’t U.S. citizen anymore; takes case to court
by Open-Publishing - Saturday 7 August 20041 comment
TOKYO - Former world chess champion Bobby Fischer, currently fighting Japanese and U.S. authorities who accuse him of traveling with an invalid passport, said he wants to renounce his U.S. citizenship and took his case to court Friday, his lawyer said.
Masako Suzuki said her client phoned the U.S. Embassy from detention at Narita airport on Thursday to convey his decision to renounce his citizenship.
"I no longer wish to be an American citizen. Enough is enough. I hereby authorize my attorney Masako Suzuki to contact the U.S. embassy in Tokyo, Japan, immediately so I can officially renounce my U.S. citizenship at once," Fischer said in the handwritten letter.
Suzuki said Fischer planned to be registered by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees as a stateless person, and that he had separately applied to the Japanese government for refugee status.
In the two-page letter, Fischer, 61, said he wanted to give up U.S. citizenship because "the filthy U.S. government and the filthy U.S.-controlled Japanese government working in collusion and in a criminal conspiracy have illegally confiscated and illegally physically destroyed my perfectly valid in every way U.S. passport."
He was detained in Japan after being stopped from boarding a flight to the Philippines on July 13 for using a passport which U.S. officials said had been revoked.
The United States issued a notice dated Dec 11, 2003, from its Manila embassy saying the passport had been revoked. But Fischer said he did not know about the letter and so missed a deadline for appealing, his supporters have said.
On July 13 the immigration office at Japan’s Narita airport retroactively canceled the entry permit it had given Fischer on April 15.
He has since been held there by the immigration authorities while they decide whether to deport him to the United States for breaking Japan’s immigration law.
Washington has sought to arrest Fischer since 1992 when he earned more than $3 million for defeating his Russian-born chess arch-rival Boris Spassky in the former Yugoslavia in defiance of an international embargo on the country at the time.
Suzuki said her client also called the U.S. embassy in Tokyo on Thursday to declare that he intended relinquishing his citizenship. (Wire reports)
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7 August 2004, 08:24
I say, anyone who wants to renounce their citizenship, needs to be deported, or be permitted to remain outside the US.