Fischer renouncing U.S. citizenship

Former world chess champion Bobby Fischer, wanted by Washington for defying sanctions on Yugoslavia, plans to renounce his U.S. citizenship, a lawyer working his appeal against deportation from Japan said on Friday.

Fischer, one of the chess world's great eccentrics, was detained at Tokyo's Narita airport last month when he tried to leave for Manila on a passport U.S. officials say was invalid.

Japanese immigration officials rejected Fischer's initial appeal against deportation and his lawyer, Masako Suzuki, has filed a second plea to Justice Minister Daizo Nozawa.

In a handwritten note made available to the media, Fischer said the U.S. government and "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 #27792702.

"As a result of the above-stated criminal act, as well as innumerable other vicious crimes against me by the U.S. government, I no longer wish to be an American citizen," said the letter, copies of which were made available to the media.

Suzuki told a news conference that Fischer, 61, would likely become a stateless person for some period of time and that his supporters would try to have the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) register him as a refugee.

The renunciation of his U.S. citizenship does not take effect until he has met a U.S. consular official and conveyed his intent in person, she said.

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The elusive chessmaster then vanished, only to resurface after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States to give an interview to Philippine radio in which he praised the strikes and said he wanted to see America "wiped out".

Fischer has filed for refugee status in Japan and is also in contact with other countries that might accept him, according to John Bosnitch, a Tokyo-based Canadian journalist and communications consultant who has been advising him.

Japan accepts only political refugees. Fischer's supporters in Japan say he is being persecuted by the United States.

Fischer's supporters say he renewed his passport in 1997 and never received a letter issued in December 2003 revoking it.

U.S. State Department officials in Washington have said it took years for the legal process to catch up with Fischer.

Fischer became world chess champion in 1972 when he beat Spassky of the Soviet Union in a victory seen as a Cold War propaganda coup for the United States.

The title was taken from him three years later after his conditions for a match against Anatoly Karpov, also of the Soviet Union, were rejected by chess officials.

Karpov became champion by default.