Please not the two paragraphs between the (mine) asterisks. -emf

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( http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniont...1m12bobby.html )

The San Diego Union Tribune

Chess legend Fischer ends legal action against U.S.

By Onell R. Soto
STAFF WRITER

April 12, 2005

Chess legend Bobby Fischer has dropped a lawsuit against the U.S.
government in San Diego federal court.

"He wants to get on with his life," said La Jolla lawyer Richard
Vattuone, who filed the suit March 23, the same day Fischer was released
from a Japanese jail and took up exile in Iceland.

"He's not interested in any more lawsuits, so that matter is over,
dismissed," Vattuone said in a telephone message. The lawyer was
unavailable for further comment yesterday.

In the suit, Fischer, 62, complained about "torture" in Japan while
being held at the behest of the United States and said he would later
include a claim for $200 million.

A grand jury indicted him in Washington, D.C., in 1992, on charges of
violating a U.S. boycott of Yugoslavia by playing a chess match there
that year.

Since then, the reclusive Fischer has been difficult to find and has
reportedly lived in Hungary, the Philippines, Switzerland and Japan.

*****
Vattuone said he is talking with Fischer supporters who are considering
another suit.

"I have been retained by the Bobby Fischer Committee, and the reason for
that is tactical," he said. "It is so that Bobby does not have to appear
in the U.S. for depositions or hearings or trial, and we may be
proceeding on another action on behalf of the committee."
*****

Vattuone met Fischer several months after the chess great was arrested
in Tokyo's Narita airport.

Fischer hired him to represent him in dealings with the U.S. government,
which had revoked his passport after the 1992 indictment and sought to
have him returned to the United States to face criminal charges.

In the suit, Vattuone said Fischer was captured as the result of a
U.S.-planned "ambush."

He said Fischer "was assaulted, battered and dragged to a cell without
explanation" during his arrest last July 14.

He also said a U.S. consular official "directed the Japanese authorities
to detain Fischer under harsh conditions, amounting to torture," until
Fischer agreed to be deported.

Fischer said he was held in solitary confinement.

In a compromise, the Japanese government allowed Fisher to fly to
Iceland after that small country in the North Atlantic – site of
Fischer's greatest chess victory – granted him citizenship.

In 1972, Fischer became world champion in Reykjavik by beating Soviet
rival Boris Spassky in a match with titanic Cold War overtones. The
rematch 20 years later in Yugoslavia got him in the legal trouble with
the United States.

In an interview with The Associated Press during the flight to Iceland,
Fischer railed against the country of his birth, President Bush and
Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.

"It's like in the comics, like Billy Batson used to say, 'Shazam!' and
he becomes Captain Marvel. He (Bush) just says, 'Enemy combatant! Now
you have no legal rights.' It's a farce," he said. "This is absolutely
cooked up between Bush and Koizumi."

Vattuone said Fischer has stopped formally fighting the United States
government.