Fischer ponders next legal move

Japanese immigration officials have rejected ex-world chess champion Bobby Fischer's appeal of their decision to deport him and Fischer may now take his case to the justice minister, a Canadian advising Fischer said on Thursday.

Fischer, 61, wanted by Washington for defying sanctions by playing a match in Yugoslavia in 1992, was detained at Tokyo's Narita airport on July 15 when he tried to leave for the Philippines on a passport U.S. officials have said was invalid.

Earlier Report Fischer fights Japan deportation

"He now has until midnight on Friday to file an appeal to the justice minister," Bosnitch said, adding that Fischer also had the option of seeking a court injunction against his deportation.

Fischer, one of the great eccentrics of the chess world, has been wanted by the United States since 1992 when he played -- and won -- a match against old rival Boris Spassky in Yugoslavia.

That brought him into conflict with the U.S. authorities, since economic sanctions against Yugoslavia were in force at the time.

Fischer arrived in Japan in April, unaware that his passport had been revoked last December, Miyoko Watai of the Japan Chess Association, a friend of Fischer, told Reuters last week.

Bosnitch, who offered to advise Fischer after he heard his "boyhood hero" had been detained, said earlier that the former chess champion maintained that his passport had never been properly revoked.

Bosnitch also said on Thursday that there had been no response yet to a request by Fischer for provisional release, "but we continue to hope permission will be forthcoming as all documentation is in order and we have a former top government official ready to act as his guarantor."

Fischer won the world chess title in 1972, beating Spassky of the Soviet Union in Reykjavik, Iceland, in a victory seen as something of a Cold War propaganda coup for the United States.

He lost the title in 1975 after his conditions for a match against Anatoly Karpov, also of the Soviet Union, were rejected by chess officials. Karpov became champion by default.

Fischer disappeared until the 1992 match against Spassky, whom he again defeated, taking $3 million in prize money.

He then disappeared again, resurfacing after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States to give an interview to Philippines radio praising the strikes.

Fischer, whose mother was Jewish, has also stirred controversy with anti-Semitic remarks.