Sara Khadem, now living in Spain, supports protesters back home but faces arrest if she returns to Iran.
When one of the world's most promising chess players, 25-year-old Sara Khadem, decided to play at an international tournament without her headscarf, in solidarity with the protest movement in Iran, she thought a warning would be the worst that would happen to her.
She and her family asked the BBC not to reveal her precise location; their worry is that there may be repercussions even thousands of miles away from Iran. Sara Khadem said there was a slow evolution of her decision to play in the tournament in Kazakhstan in December last year without her headscarf. The contestants only wore them in front of the cameras, and she felt that was hypocritical. Given the sacrifices being made by the women and girls on the streets of Iran, some of them risking their lives, it was the least she could do, she said.Had she considered joining the demonstrators herself? "Yes of course," she replied.
In 2020, a Ukrainian plane which took off from Tehran airport was shot down by, as it turned out, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, killing 176 people. It was three days before the authorities admitted their error. Ms Khadem said on social media she was planning to leave the national team. She did not mention the flight - nevertheless, she was forced to sign a confession saying she did not mean anything political by her post.
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