Lisbon Mayor Fernando Medina is facing calls for his resignation as a result of his government s decision to share the personal information of at least three Lisbon-based Russian dissidents with Russian authorities.
Municipal authorities obtained the personal data when the dissidents applied to hold a rally to protest the arrest of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny in January. City ordinances require protest organizers to submit their names, identification numbers, home addresses and telephone numbers so that Portugal s Public Security Police (PSP) can contact them if anything goes wrong during the event.
Protest organizer Ksenia Ashrafullina, a 36-year-old Russian-Portuguese dual citizen, told POLITICO that when she reviewed her email exchanges with city hall she found evidence that municipal employees had forwarded the data to both the Russian embassy in Lisbon and Russia s Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Moscow.