Bobby Fischer: five days in solitary confinement
08.03.2005 We had just reported about Fischer's new passport, which an
Icelandic delegation had carried to Japan. A minor mystery was why it
had not been handed over to him last Wednesday, as planned. Now we
learn that Japanese authorities had put the former world champion into
solitary confinement. For five days. Over a hard-boiled egg. We are not
joking.


The ever-watchful Mainichi Daily News reports that Bobby Fischer was
placed in solitary confinement for several days (we are told for five)
"because of a brawl over a single hard-boiled egg". Apparently Fischer
asked for an extra egg. There was an argument and a scuffle, after
which Fisher was "hurled alone into a cell lit and monitored 24 hours
from Wednesday to Sunday."

Mainichi notes that the fight occurred on the same day that the first
of two delegations of eminent persons from Iceland were due to meet him
at the East Japan Immigration Bureau Detention Center in Ushiku,
Ibaraki Prefecture. Officials at the center were aware that Fischer was
due to receive a delegation on exactly the day he ended up in solitary
confinement.

It was the first time Fischer had been placed in a solitary cell since
he was sent to Ushiku in August last year. "It was a blatant
provocation," Gardar Sverrisson, an Icelandic politician and member of
a Fischer support group said at the home of the Tokyo Bar Association.


Miyoko Watai and Saemundur Palsson

Details of the incident were given by Fischer's fiancee Miyoko Watai
and his long-time friend, Saemundur Palsson, who was able to visit
Fisher and speak to him through a glass window on Monday morning.
Fischer told Palsson that he had asked a passing guard if he could have
an egg for his breakfast. He grabbed the guard by his shirt, which
unfortunately ripped. "A group of about 14 or 15 guards came into
Fischer's cell to drag him away," Palsson reports. "He resisted their
efforts. Guards slapped handcuffs on him with his hands behind his
back, holding him that way for two hours. Then a middle-aged guard
approached Fischer, told him he had to behave himself, then started to
free him from his bindings. When the handcuffs were released, another
scuffle broke out and Fischer hit a guard in the face." Palsson said he
was not sure whether Fischer had hit the warden purposely or by
accident. He said Fischer had not spoken about whether it was
deliberate.

After his release from solitary confinement Fischer was on Monday
permitted individual 30-minute meetings with Watai, Palsson and
Gudmunder Thorarinsson, former head of the Icelandic Chess Federation
and organizer of Fischer's 1972 match in Reykjavik with Boris Spassky
for the world title. The Icelanders are hoping to escort Fischer back
to their country. Iceland has prepared a special foreigner's passport
for him and his supporters have an airplane ticket out of the country
with his name on it. He is hoping to leave by Wednesday, his 62nd
birthday, but that wish seems almost impossible.