Icelandic passport for Bobby Fischer

Icelandic immigration authorities agreed today to grant former American chess champion Bobby Fischer a special foreigners' passport which would allow him to travel to western Europe.

MPs last week turned down Fischer’s citizenship application, prompting his supporters to apply on his behalf for a so-called foreigner’s passport.

The document would allow him to travel freely between the 15 Western European countries of the passport-free Schengen zone, but not to the United States, said Gudrun Ogmundsdottir, a member of Iceland’s Parliament General Committee.

The United States has been seeking Fischer, 61, for more than a decade on charges of violating international sanctions against the former Yugoslavia by playing chess there in 1992.

The former chess champion has been detained in Tokyo since he was arrested six months ago for trying to board a plane to the Philippines with an invalid US passport, and Japan has ordered him to be deported to the United States.

A group of Fischer supporters – some of whom he befriended while in Iceland for his 1972 chess match against Soviet chess champion Boris Spassky - petitioned the Icelandic government to grant Fischer citizenship.

“Fischer’s dispute with the Japanese authorities is first and foremost due to him having been in Japan without a valid passport. This should solve that problem,” said Einar Einarsson, chairman of an Icelandic Bobby Fischer Supporters’ Group.

He said Fischer’s passport was already being processed and would be ready tomorrow to send to him in Japan.

Ogmundsdottir said she hoped this would allow Japanese authorities to release Fischer.

“If they do not, then it is a question of whether we proceed with citizenship. Citizenship by parliamentary decree is granted twice a year, in December and in April, so we’ll have to see then,” Ogmundsdottir said.

The Schengen countries are: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Greece, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain and Sweden.