Fischer launches tirade against 'stooge' Koizumi, 'sham' U.S.

ABOARD SAS FLIGHT SK984 (AP) Sitting in the first-class cabin whisking him away from detention in Japan, a wide-eyed, bushy-bearded Bobby Fischer launched a rambling diatribe against the United States, calling it "an illegitimate country" that should be given back to "the red man."

Fischer claimed Thursday that he was "kidnapped" in Japan, and that U.S. President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi were in cahoots trying to deprive him of freedom and bring him back to the United States, where he is wanted on criminal charges.

"Bush does not respect law," Fischer said in an interview on the flight to Copenhagen, his stopover en route to Iceland, which this week granted him citizenship.

"It's like in the comics, like Billy Batson used to say 'Shazaaam!' 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."

Fischer paused frequently to collect his thoughts. Wisps of hair were matted against his temples, and he once gulped deeply from a glass of milky liqueur before explaining why he felt his detention in Japan for using an invalid passport was illegal. Fischer denied he had been carrying an invalid passport in Japan and called Koizumi "a stooge."

The reclusive chess genius was unusually expansive on the flight, unleashing his anger on two of his favorite targets: The U.S. government and Israel. A wounded world view came through -- one that pits a bullying America against the underdog.

"The United States is an illegitimate country . . . just like the bandit state of Israel -- the Jews have no right to be there, it belongs to the Palestinians," said Fischer, whose mother was Jewish. "That country, the United States, belongs to the red man, the American Indian. . . . It's actually a shame to be a so-called American because everybody living there is . . . an invader."

He traced the origins of his troubled relationship with his homeland to his failed lawsuit in the 1970s against Time Inc., now Time-Warner, for defamation of character, breach of contract and other issues; a U.S. District Court threw it out as groundless.

"I got laughed out of court," he said. "This is when I began to realize what kind of a country America was then . . . it's just a sham democracy.. . . That's when I started to part company with the U.S."