Lisbon mayor: Pro-Palestine protestors’ details were illegally given to ‘Israel’

Lisbon (QNN)- Lisbon has in the past three years illegally shared personal information of protesters in 52 protests with embassies of countries they were protesting against, including ‘Israel’, Mayor Fernando Medina said on Friday after an internal investigation.

Data on organizers of 182 protests has been shared with the embassies since 2012, the investigation concluded, 52 of which occurred after the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation – which bans such data sharing – came into force in 2018.

Medina did not specify which embassies were informed, but he gave an example of information provided to the Israeli Embassy in 2011 to show that previous council leaders had followed the same procedure. The information provided at that time named at least one person who took part in the protest against Israeli violations in occupied Palestine, he said.

The mayor spoke as he published the results of a preliminary internal audit into why the city council shared with Russian officials personal details of at least three Lisbon-based dissidents. The dissidents organized a protest in Lisbon five months ago in support of jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

The information-sharing, first reported by Portuguese newspapers Expresso and Observador earlier this month, caused a scandal.

Medina last week ruled out stepping down himself over the incident.
“This was an inadequate policy which should never have happened,” Medina said.