Leftwing EU MPs cancel Iran visit (wanted to visit two Sakharov Prize winners)
A planned visit to Iran by five European MPs has been called off just before their scheduled departure.
The change in plans was announced on Saturday after Tehran said it would refuse to let them meet a jailed activist lawyer and a filmmaker, just a day after the two were awarded a prestigious European human rights prize.
Iran claimed that the delegation, made up of leftwing and ecologist MEPs, had only itself to blame for placing preconditions on the delegation's visit.
The human rights and democracy prize "is a message of solidarity and recognition to a woman and a man who have not been bowed by fear and intimidation and who have decided to put the fate of their country before their own," Parliament President Martin Schulz said Friday.
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2012/10/2012102832649733817.html