| Liam Too 2005-03-21, 5:52 pm |
| Hans J=F8rgen Lassen wrote:
quote:
> News are sparse. Does anyone know if Fischer is now a citizen of
> Iceland?
> HansJ
Yes, here's from CNN:
Iceland offer for fugitive Fischer
Monday, March 21, 2005 Posted: 1:21 PM EST (1821 GMT)
REYKJAVIK, Iceland (AP) -- Iceland's parliament has voted to grant
citizenship to fugitive U.S. chess star Bobby Fischer.
The legislation, passed Monday with 40 lawmakers voting "aye" and two
abstaining following a brief debate, became law immediately.
"I am very pleased with this, and I think that the dignity of the
parliament has increased," Fischer's supporter Saemundur Palsson said,
adding that Fischer would be informed Tuesday morning Japanese time.
"I hope that he will stop cursing the Americans now. It has gotten him
into so much trouble," Palsson told reporters.
Einar S. Einarsson, another of Fischer's key supporters, said he had
spoken to the mercurial chess genius earlier in the day.
Fischer hoped the process would be quick, and "I don't think it could
have been much quicker," Einarsson said. The bill went through the
required three readings in 12 minutes.
Fischer, 62, has been detained in Japan awaiting deportation to the
United States, where he is wanted for violating economic sanctions
against the former Yugoslavia by playing a highly publicized chess
match there in 1992.
There is widespread support for Fischer in Iceland, where he played the
Soviet Union's Boris Spassky in a world championship match in 1972.
Iceland's parliament voted last month against granting Fischer
citizenship, offering him a special foreigners' passport and residence
permit instead. But Japanese officials declined to release him.
Since being taken into custody in July for allegedly trying to leave
Japan on a revoked U.S. passport, Fischer has repeatedly denounced the
U=2ES. deportation order as politically motivated, demanded refugee
status, renounced his U.S. citizenship and said he wants to become a
German national instead.
He has also applied to marry a Japanese woman who heads Iceland's chess
association and is his longtime companion.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europ...ndex.html?sect=
ion=3Dcnn_latest
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