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Rogers Inforchess Column #49
Por el GM Ian Rogers

The Bobby Fischer saga may be nearing an end following the news this week that Iceland has agreed to grant the former World Champion a residence permit.
Fischer has been imprisoned since July when the 61-year-old American was detained at Narita airport; his passport was found to have been cancelled, without his knowledge, by the US authorities.

The US sought to extradite Fischer for 'Trading With the Enemy', for playing a sanctions-busting $5m rematch against Spassky in Yugoslavia in 1992. However the deportation was indefinitely deferred while legal arguments raged about whether a person could be deported for such a crime and also about the legality of the Executive Order (signed by the original President Bush in 1992) upon which the case against Fischer is based.
Fischer, arguably the greatest player in chess history, enjoys almost cult following among some chess fans and soon after his arrest a group in Iceland set up the FreeBobby.org web site.
The erratic Fischer, remains a fond problem child for Iceland, Fischer gave Iceland worldwide prominence when he won the world title there in 1972, beating the Soviet titleholder Boris Spassky in a match loaded with Cold War symbolism.

Public pressure for the Icelandic government to take action to help Fischer mounted and it was not long before the Icelandic Ambassador to Japan was holding private talks with Japanese and US officials, searching for a solution.
In late October the ambassador convinced Fischer to write an official letter to the Icelandic Embassy asking for political asylum.
Fischer's letter requesting asylum was a rambling three page screed, claiming that the matter was urgent because he was being poisoned in the East Japan Immigration Detention Centre by a nearby nuclear power plant: "For all I know I am already condemned to die an agonising death from cancer. But even if that is so, I would like to die in freedom in a friendly country."
However for a month the Icelandic authorities failed to respond to Fischer's letter. The Icelandic Foreign Minister, David Oddsson - himself a chess fan - was faced with a number of legal and diplomatic difficulties, including the close political relationship between Iceland and the US, as well as Iceland's legal obligations given that they had participated in the economic sanctions against Yugoslavia during the civil war in the 1990s.

Three weeks ago Fischer wrote again, this time directly to Oddsson. By now a  formal Fischer support group had been established in Iceland , including leading personalities such as GM Fridrik Olafsson, the former Speaker of the Icelandic Parliament, and Fischer's former bodyguard from the 1972 match Saemundur Palsson. The RJF Committee Iceland began a lobbying campaign which proved very persuasive.
Fischer, however, was not doing his support group any favours. In a ten minute interview with Icelandic television last week from the detention centre, Fischer managed to insult the Americans, Japanese and, to a lesser extent, the Icelanders.
Fischer insisted that he had been illegally kidnapped by the Japanese. "I want to get out of this filthy country and find a country which will give me political asylum. I didn't do anything wrong [in playing in Yugoslavia in 1992] - this was just a phoney-baloney Executive Order which has no validity in the US Constitution. They [the US] want to put me in prison for ten years but of course I'll be murdered once I'm there - there's no question about that." When asked if he was using Iceland only as a stopover before going on to another country, Fischer seemed cagey and refused to give a direct answer.

Early last week rumours began to circulate in Reykjavik that the diplomatic difficulties were close to being solved and on Wednesday Oddsson announced that Fischer would be granted a residence permit in Iceland, "in recognition of Fischer's contribution to the development of chess in Iceland", and that Iceland would immediately begin negotiating with the Japanese authorities for Fischer's release and transfer.
Unfortunately, chess fans hoping that Fischer's transfer to the country with the world's greatest number of Grandmasters per head of population will encourage Fischer to return to the active tournament play seem certain to be disappointed.

Fischer has not played a competitive game since his 1992 match with Spassky, preferring to promote the game he calls FischerRandom - a chess offshoot where the pieces on the first rank are shuffled before the game begins. When asked during the television interview if chess still played a large role in his life, Fischer replied "I have no interest whatsoever in chess - I want to play FischerRandom."

GM Ian Rogers