I remember seeing him talk at a literature festival four or five years ago. Afterwards he held a book signing, and there I was, two foot away, able to talk to him, which may or may not have happened, and ask him to sign something, which may or may not have happened. I remember thinking how strange it was that I could have such close access to him without any security around him, or without any checks at all on me. A good thing, in the sense that he felt brave/confident enough to just get on with things, but at the same time it did make me think how much of a risk he was taking, that it would only take one person, somewhere, to do what happened a few days ago.
Now, here's the thing. I'm just an ordinary fella, born and living in the UK, and of Iranian origin. I like to go back to Iran once every few years. Yet I've heard plenty of stories of British Iranians who get told to hand over passwords to email and social media accounts, either randomly at the border or based on job roles, or anything else that might raise the slightest suspicion. I work for a UK university as it happens. So I've had plenty of thoughts that I'd like to have aired on this, on Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, either on social media or even on here, where I've actually stopped and in a sense self-censored or edited, just because of that 0.1% bit of doubt in my mind, that bit of worry, where I think it's just not worth it. I'll stay quiet. And, honestly, when you think about this, in this context, of me, just a bloke in the UK posting on a football forum...it tells you something about the importance of these related issues.
