by Hiroshi Hiyama
TOKYO - A despondent Bobby Fischer, the US chess legend fighting against deportation from Japan to the United States, spent four days in solitary confinement after a tussle with guards, his supporters said Monday.
At breakfast last Wednesday, Fischer asked for an egg and reached for the shirt of an official at the detention center. The shirt tore and 14 or 15 guards rushed to suppress Fischer, his supporters said.
"In the struggle, Mr Fischer's fist punched the face of one of the officials," said his fiancee Miyoko Watai, who met him Monday morning for 30 minutes at the Ushiku immigration lock-up in central Japan.
Fischer's friend Saemi Palsson, who also met with the chess legend, said: "He felt he was provoked."
Detention center authorities were not immediately available for comment.
The former grandmaster's friends had earlier accused Japanese authorities of stopping them from seeing him last week as they try to win Tokyo's agreement to allow him travel to Iceland, which has offered him residency.
Fischer, 61, was detained in July when attempting to fly out of Japan to the Philippines. The maverick genius faces 10 years in prison in the US for playing chess in the former Yugoslavia in 1992, allegdly violating sanctions imposed over the Balkan wars.
Palsson, a native of Iceland where Fischer played his greatest match in 1972, said Fischer had complained of chronic headaches and dizziness.
"He has a beard like Leonardo Da Vinci. He looked older," Palsson said.
Watai, who became engaged to Fischer after his detention and heads the Japan Chess Association, said that "mentally and physically, he is really exhausted." "He has lost all hope and faith in life," she said.
Fischer's supporters say the chess legend is being targetted for his political views despite once being lauded as an American hero for his 1972 triumph in Iceland against the Soviet Boris Spassky.
But he went on Filipino radio on September 11, 2001 to hail the "wonderful news" of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, and then launched into an anti-Jewish tirade.
His lawyers said Fischer's detention, despite an invitation to live in Iceland, showed that Japan was under strong pressure from the US.
They noted that Fischer was fairly unknown in Japan, which is not a major chess-playing nation.
"Japan is using Mr Fischer's relative anonymity in Japan to hold him for a long time," said lawyer Masako Suzuki. "Mr Fischer is a victim of the Japanese immigration law."
Gardar Sverrisson, one of Fischer's supporters and also from Iceland, criticized Japan for "inconsistent" and "double standards" in applying immigration laws to hold Fischer.
The Mainichi Shimbun reported Sunday that the US government was now moving to prosecute Fischer for tax evasion.
His lawyers said they were yet to confirm the report.
"If the reports were true, we would have to ask why they are pressing the charges now," said another attorney, Takeshi Ohashi.
"If that's true, we must say the US government is going after the separate charges because they were not able to take him into custody" for violating sanctions against Yugoslavia, he said.

03/07/2005 12:00 GMT