[JTR Contributor's note: "While you were away, Bobby Fischer was arrested in Japan. There was general gloating from the usual suspects over the 'capture' of this 'legendary antisemite.' Here are two articles with the latest news on Bobby's predicament, and below I have included a forward of the previous take on his capture back in July by the New York Times. A word about this NYT article. It originally included the statement: "In the radio interview last year, he called the United States "a brutal Jewish dictatorship." This statement was excluded from most newspapers that carried this story, perhaps because it was not seen as 'relevant' to audiences outside New York that would be rooting for his imprisonment. Unfortunately the original link is no longer valid, but the backup links I give do not include this statement, but otherwise carry an almost identical version of the story."]
Fischer fears ‘torture and murder’ in US,
by DAVID BAMBER, The Telegraph (India), August 31, 2004
"Bobby Fischer, the American former world chess champion, fears that he will be “tried convicted, sentenced, imprisoned, tortured and murdered” when Japan deports him to America. In a characteristically eccentric interview with a Philippines radio station, Fischer said Japan, his home for the past three years, was guilty of a “vicious betrayal” after he lost his legal battle against deportation last week. He faces a 10-year prison sentence in the United States for violating international sanctions in 1992 by playing a chess game in the former Yugoslavia against his long-time Russian rival, Boris Spassky. Fischer, 61, has been held in a Tokyo jail for six weeks after immigration officers at Narita airport seized his passport, which had been revoked by the US authorities. “They are preparing to deport me to the US to be murdered,” Fischer told Bombo Radyo in a rambling telephone interview. “`They stabbed me in the back. “I spent $350,000 here in Japan. I gave them my time, I gave them my money, spent a fortune going to Japanese mineral baths. But just one call from the US embassy and they are sending me to prison in the US to die.” Fischer believes that he is being persecuted on political grounds. He is renowned for his virulent anti-Semitic and anti-American outbursts, most notoriously praising the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington on the evening of September 11, 2001. Despite his views, he still has many supporters. Spassky recently wrote to President George W Bush to plead on his old foe’s behalf."

King's Gambit. How chess maestro Bobby Fischer turned fugitive and ended up in a Japanese detention cell,
By Jim Frederick, TIME Asia Magazine, Aug. 23, 2004
"To the average lonely heart, Bobby Fischer—erstwhile chess champion, virulent anti-Semite, and fugitive from the U.S. justice system—might not sound like Mr. Right ... After 12 years on the run from charges that he broke U.S. trade regulations, the 61-year-old chess genius is fighting attempts to deport him back to the U.S. after Japanese immigration authorities apprehended him on July 13 for traveling on an allegedly invalid passport. That collaring brought to a close one of the most famous (if not particularly intense) manhunts in recent American history. A prodigy from New York who managed, improbably, to make chess cool, Fischer rocketed to stardom for his aggressive play and flamboyance. In 1972, at the age of 29, he defeated Russian Boris Spassky for the world title in a cold war showdown that made him an American hero. Soon after, however, Fischer's life degenerated from triumph to farce. He joined the fringe Worldwide Church of God, then abruptly left it. He grew increasingly vocal about his anti-Semitic views, despite the fact that his own mother was Jewish. He quit playing competitive chess, and was stripped of his title in 1975 for failing to face challenger Anatoly Karpov. Then, in 1992, Fischer resurfaced to play a rematch with Spassky in Yugoslavia, where Americans were forbidden from doing business because of its government's support of Serbian aggression in Bosnia. At a press conference before the match, Fischer spat on a letter from the U.S. Treasury Department telling him not to play. He beat Spassky and pocketed a $3.35 million prize, and a U.S. federal warrant was issued for his arrest. Faced with a possible penalty of up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine for violating America's economic sanctions, he has never returned to the States. For more than a decade, Fischer crisscrossed the globe, passing through Hungary, Switzerland, Hong Kong, Macau and South Korea. By 2000, Japan and the Philippines had become his primary home bases, and he reportedly reveled in the relative anonymity they afforded him. Yet Fischer never truly went into hiding. He traveled using his real identity and passport, and he twice dared to pass directly under the U.S. government's nose. In 1997, Fischer renewed his passport at the U.S. embassy in Bern, Switzerland, and he returned there in 2003 to get 20 new passport pages. Nor was he shy about using the media to express his views. He made 21 live radio appearances from 1999-2003, mostly in the Philippines. During these spots he would rail against the worldwide Jewish and American conspiracies supposedly out to ruin him, calling the Jews "filthy, lying bastard people" and the U.S. a "brutal, evil dictatorship." When the World Trade Center was destroyed on Sept. 11, 2001, he announced on Philippine radio: "This is wonderful news. I applaud the act ... I want to see the U.S. wiped out."