Portugal suspends visas for Iranians

Augusto Santos Silva Portugal’s Foreign Minister

Augusto Santos Silva Portugal's Foreign Minister

Augusto Santos Silva Portugal’s Foreign Minister

Portugal has suspended the issuance of entry visas for Iranians for unspecified security reasons, Foreign Minister Augusto Santos Silva told a parliamentary committee on Tuesday.

Answering a question from a committee member on whether such a move had been taken, Santos Silva said during the televised meeting: “Yes, we suspended those for security reasons … I will provide explanations later, but not publicly”.

“Portugal does not play around with entry into its territory,” he added, without disclosing when the decision was taken.

The chairman declared the meeting closed after about two hours without further off-camera testimony.

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Joao Goncalves Pereira, the lawmaker from the conservative CDS-PP party who asked the question, told Reuters: “We received information that visas for Iranians had been suspended for two or three weeks, and we just wanted to confirm that.”

He would not say what was the source of that original information or whether any Iranian nationals had complained about the situation.

Foreign ministry officials had no immediate comment and nobody was available for comment in the Iranian embassy in Lisbon.

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