BOBBY FISCHER, the former world chess champion incarcerated for the past nine months, may be freed this week after a diplomatic confrontation between Japan and Iceland.

President Grimsson of Iceland is expected to sign into law today a Bill granting citizenship to Mr Fischer. It represents the culmination of an extraordinary campaign by Reykjavik to save Mr Fischer from deportation to the United States where he faces criminal prosecution.

John Bosnitch, head of the Tokyo-based Committee to Free Bobby Fischer, said: “The Icelandic parliament, the Althingi, has . . . made history by standing up to the Earth’s sole superpower and demonstrating that it can no longer bully individuals or nations.”

Chieko Nono, Japan’s Justice Minister, acknowledged for the first time yesterday that Mr Fischer might be allowed to travel to Iceland.

Mr Bosnitch said: “Bobby Fischer is standing up as a hero of every oppressed individual in the world.”

Mr Fischer is an unlikely prisoner of conscience, an extreme anti-Semite who has spoken openly of the attacks on the US on 11 September 2001 as “wonderful news”, and of his hope for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Jews.

He cut a very different figure in 1972 when he won the world chess championship against Boris Spassky, the Soviet grandmaster, in Reykjavik. His victory was regarded as a symbolic Cold War defeat for the entire Eastern Bloc. He has been seen since as a national hero by many Icelanders — hence their Government’s intervention after his arrest in Japan last June.

Mr Fischer faces criminal charges in the US over a return match which he played against Mr Spassky in the former Yugoslavia in 1992. US sanctions in place at the time made this a crime for an American citizen and he has not set foot in his native land since.

Last July, as he was about to fly out of Tokyo where he had been living unnoticed with his Japanese girlfriend, he was arrested by immigration officers. Without informing Mr Fischer, the US authorities had revoked his American passport; since then he has been detained because he lacks a valid travel document. The Icelandic Government offered him residency, but Japan refused to release him. Then Iceland issued him with an “alien” passport, which was also judged inadequate.

Mr Bosnitch said: “Then we went into the last alternative, which was to get Bobby Fischer citizenship. We’ve now gone through every hoop that the Japanese Government has set up for us.”

Explore World News

• World Agenda

• Iraq News

• US & Americas News

• Europe News

• Middle East News

• Afghanistan News

• Asia News

• Africa News

• Ireland News

Times Recommends

• Henning Mankell: ‘If Wallander was alive, I wouldn’t be a friend of his’
• Secret society's skull and crossbones for sale
• Nigerian leader vanishes after medical treatment