The pro­test­er who in­vad­ed the pitch dur­ing the World Cup game be­tween Por­tu­gal and Uruguay has been re­leased with no con­se­quences.

This is ac­cord­ing to the Ital­ian ac­tivist Mario Fer­ri, who ran across the field with a rain­bow flag while wear­ing a t-shirt with 'Save Ukraine' on the front and 'Re­spect for Iran­ian woman' on the back has been re­leased with no con­se­quences.

In a state­ment to AFP, the min­istry said there were no fur­ther con­se­quences for Fer­ri.

The de­ci­sion to stage the World Cup in Qatar, where ho­mo­sex­u­al­i­ty is il­le­gal, has been crit­i­cised by LGBTQ+ groups.

Fer­ri has staged sim­i­lar protests be­fore, in­clud­ing at the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, where he raised the is­sue of chil­dren liv­ing in pover­ty.

Stew­ards chased him and he dropped the flag be­fore be­ing tak­en off the field at Lu­sail Sta­di­um.

Ital­ian ac­tivist Fer­ri was re­leased by au­thor­i­ties "af­ter a brief de­ten­tion", said the Ital­ian for­eign min­istry.

Be­fore the tour­na­ment in Qatar, FI­FA wrote to all 32 com­pet­ing teams to tell them to "fo­cus on the foot­ball".

Qatar World Cup am­bas­sador Khalid Salman called ho­mo­sex­u­al­i­ty "dam­age in the mind" pri­or to the tour­na­ment, com­ments which Hu­man Rights Watch said were "harm­ful and un­ac­cept­able".