"Undesirable" Spaniard sent out of country

Miquel Puertas was a former lecturer at Vytautas Magnus University in Lithuania's second-largest city of Kaunas.

"He was no longer in Lithuania this morning. He was sent to his country of origin," Rokas Pukinskas, spokesman for the State Border Guard Service, told BNS.

In his words, the Spaniard was detained on August 25 in Kaunas and taken to the Foreigners' Registration Center in Pabrade for 48 hours. Later on, a court allowed extending the man's detention until a decision on his deportation was made.

When approached by BNS, the SBGS, the Interior Ministry and the State Security Department refrained from providing any detail on why Puertas was sent out of the country.

He's not on the official list of people declared persona non grata. According to information available to BNS, the man is on the non-public list of people deemed persona non grata.

The alfa.lt news website was the one to break the news about the Spaniard's detention. It says the former lecturer lost his job over "his statement inciting to hatred and humiliating Lithuania, and later lived for some time in the Ukrainian city of Donetsk controlled by pro-Russian separatists.