Bobby Fischer speaking during flight to Denmark, en route to Iceland

(24 Mar 2005) SHOTLIST 1. SOUNDBITE: (English) Bobby Fischer, former world chess champion: Q: "How does it feel to be free?" "Great, great." 2. SOUNDBITE: (English) Bobby Fischer, former world chess champion: "Totally illegal. This was not an arrest, it was a kidnapping, because the charges that the Japanese charged me with are total nonsense. They said I illegal entered Japan on April 15 with an invalid passport. It's nonsense. My passport was perfectly good. They have never explained what they are talking about. They gave me a letter from the US Embassy in the Pillippines with no signature, no address, no envelop, no receipt, nothing. This is what the case is all about. A letter with no signature, a photocopy of a letter. There is no case. It's total nonsense. This was a kidnapping. Totally illegal from day one. Bush does not respect law. He just calls people a ..... enemy combatant. It's like in the comics, you know. Like Billy Batson used to say 'Shazam' and he becomes Captain Marvel. He just says enemy combatant, now you have no legal rights. It's a farce. It's the same with this kidnapping. Absolutely no legality to it. It's just my misfortune that this idiot Koizumi, this bastard, is like a close friend of Bush and he's willing to do anything that Bush tells him." Q: "You were saying you thought the government of Japan is kind of corrupt or....." "Yes, yes, Koizumi in particular. This man is mentally ill, there's no question he's mentally ill in my opinion. He told Bush, 'I want you, I need you, I love you'. This is in the newspapers, the Japanese papers. I've never heard of a politician prostrating himself like this before another politician, openly. Normally when you are a stooge like Koizumi you will try to hide it, right. But this guy is openly a stooge. He's sick, he's a sick bastard. This was absolutely cooked up between Bush and Koizumi, no question about that. Behind Bush were the Jews, telling him what to do, then Bush was telling telling Koizumi what to do." 3. SOUNDBITE: (English) Bobby Fischer, former world chess champion: "First of all the United States is an illegitimate country, just like Israel, it has no right to exist. That country, the United States, belongs to the Red Man, the American Indian." STORYLINE Chess legend Bobby Fischer said on Thursday that freedom felt "great" after nine months' detention in Japan, where he had been held by authorities for trying to leave the country using an invalid US passport. Fischer, released from Japanese custody earlier on Thursday, stopped over in Denmark before he was to catch a flight to his new home, Iceland, which has granted him citizenship. On the flight from Tokyo to Copenhagen, Fischer accused Japanese officials of "kidnapping" him by taking him into custody in July. "This was a kidnapping because the charges that the Japanese charged me with are totally nonsense," he told Associated Press Television News on the flight. "My passport was perfectly good," the eccentric genius insisted. Asked what it will be like to be free, he replied: "Great, great." Fischer was the first passenger to emerge from the Tokyo-Copenhagen flight. Police officers ushered him and his fiancee, Miyoko Watai, down a staircase and into an unmarked van. They were set to board another flight to the Icelandic capital, Reykjavik, in the evening. 62-year-old Fischer claims his US passport was revoked illegally and sued to block a deportation order to the United States, where he is wanted for violating sanctions imposed on the former Yugoslavia by playing an exhibition match against Russian Boris Spassky in 1992. Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork Twitter: https://twitter.com/AP_Archive Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/APArchives ​​ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/APNews/ You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/youtube/7a858981e8be82f7075ab985fad78725