Freed chess icon flies to Iceland

CHESS legend Bobby Fischer walked free from a Japanese detention centre early yesterday.

He immediately headed for the airport to fly to his new home, Iceland, following a nine- month deportation battle with Tokyo officials.

Mr Fischer was accompanied by his fiancée Miyoko Watai, the head of Japan’s chess association, and Iceland’s ambassador to Japan, Thordur Oskarsson.

Mr Fischer was characteristically defiant: “I won’t be free until I get out of Japan. This was not an arrest. It was a kidnapping cooked up by Bush and Koizumi,” he said, referring to US President George Bush and Japanese prime minister Junichiro Koizumi. “They are war criminals and should be hung,” he said.