Friday, December 17, 2004

Asylum in Iceland?

The Washington Post reports that Iceland is offering former chess champion Bobby Fischer asylum should he be deported from Japan. Fischer, an American, has been in jail in Japan since July. He is fighting extradition to the United States where he faces charges of violating economic sanctions against Yugoslavia by traveling there to play a chess match in 1992. Iceland was the site of perhaps the most widely followed match in the history of chess, Fischer's win over the Soviet Union's Boris Spassky.