February 16, 2006
The Iranian ambassador to Portugal has been strongly criticized for questioning the extent of the Holocaust. “When I was ambassador in Warsaw, I visited Auschwitz and Birkenau twice and made my calculations”, Mohammed Taheri told Portugal’s RTP radio on Wednesday. “To incinerate 6 million people, 15 years would be necessary.” Taheri further defended Iran's leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has called the Holocaust a "myth" and said that the recent controversy over Danish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed was a “conspiracy by Zionists”. In response, the Portuguese government summoned Taheri to lodge a protest. Portugal’s foreign minister, Diogo Freitas, said in a statement that the ambassador’s remarks “seriously offended humanity’s collective conscience.”
