Bobby Fischer on trial?

Surely you have heard by now that Bobby Fischer was arrested in Japan, for violating U.N. trade sanctions against Yugoslavia/Serbia in the early 1990s. Here is the most detailed scoop I have managed to find.

Here is just one bit of this sad story:

If the United States had been serious about keeping tabs on the ex-champ to account for his 1992 felony, they had a good opportunity to start doing so in 1997, when he successfully applied in person for an American passport at the U.S. Embassy in Bern. Switzerland was not then a U.N. member, so Fischer could not have been detained on the American arrest warrant. But for six years he traveled around the world without impediment on that passport. If there was indeed a “hunt” for Fischer, it wasn’t very careful or vigorous.

Even without a valid passport, he was entitled to return to the United States to face the federal charges against him, but this obviously wasn’t his intention last week. Fischer writes of himself in the third person, “Bobby Fischer does not wish to return to the Jew-controlled USA where he faces a kangaroo court and 10 years in Federal prison and a likely early demise or worse on trumped political charges. Nor does he wish to remain in a hostile brutal and corrupt U.S.-controlled Japan.”

Fischer is not an admirable fellow, but there is much to the following:

The sad truth is that at 61, Fischer is right to question his own ability to survive a long stretch in prison. Most people with impairments like his don’t live so long in the first place, and they certainly don’t do well in jail. You can call him schizophrenic, or “bipolar,” or whatever you like. Clearly some description of the sort is valid, whether or not these are illnesses or mere personality types.

Ten years is merely the maximum American penalty for his violation of U.N. sanctions, and a good defense lawyer would emphasize the absurdity of imprisoning a man for having aided and abetted a long-defeated regime in a country that, technically, no longer exists. Playing chess, after all, isn’t quite the same thing as smuggling yellowcake.

Fischer was a boyhood idol of mine, now he has fallen so far. Thanks to Eric Crampton for the pointer.

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