Bobby Fischer battle heats up

Thursday, July 29, 2004
TOKYO — "The battle to block the deportation of chess champion Bobby Fischer is entering a new stage," says John Bosnitch, the Tokyo-based communications consultant and journalist who has been helping the chess legend. "Not only has U.S. passport law been completely disregarded, but now, Japanese Immigration officials have made it clear they don't even care about their own laws."

Bosnitch told Japan Today on Thursday that Fischer's supporters worldwide are angry. "This is a travesty of punishments before hearings, blind reliance on secret evidence, willful theft and destruction of a U.S. passport, and purported U.S. consular visits by a person who refuses to identify himself and then disappears." he says, "The only way to end all this it is to drag it out into the public eye."

The Committee to Free Bobby Fischer, which Bosnitch is organizing, and the Japan Chess Association, led by Ms. Miyoko Watai, a longtime friend of Bobby Fischer, are hosting a press conference in Tokyo at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan at 1:00 PM, Thursday to, "lay bare the whole tale of the way this revered chess genius and hero of an entire generation has been entrapped, brutalized and denied his rights in the very gateway of what purports to be a land of peace and harmony."

"If I extrapolate from how these officials have treated an international personage like Bobby Fischer, I hesitate to imagine the treatment being accorded to some others."

Japan Today will be covering the press conference and will be following up with exclusive interviews with Bosnitch and Watai, outlining future plans for Fischer's defense.

Fischer's confiscated passport, which in fact may have been destroyed