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Snowden 'seeks Ecuador asylum'

June 23, 2013

A former US security agency contractor wanted for alleged espionage is reported to be seeking asylum in Ecuador. This came hours after Edward Snowden arrived in Moscow on a flight from Hong Kong.

https://p.dw.com/p/18uiu
Two cars of the embassy of Ecuador in Moscow are parked outside the terminal where Edward Snowden, the former contractor for the U.S. National Security Agency, is believed to have landed in Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport, June 23, 2013. A passenger plane believed to be carrying former U.S. spy agency contractor Edward Snowden from Hong Kong landed in Moscow on Sunday. Reporters at Sheremetyevo international airport said there was no immediate sign of Snowden, who is charged by Washington with espionage, but Russian media suggested he may have been whisked away by car to a foreign embassy in Moscow. REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov (RUSSIA - Tags: MEDIA POLITICS)
Snowden Moskau Ecuador AsylImage: Reuters

Ecuadorean Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino said on Sunday that he had been informed that the former National Security Agency contractor had requested asylum in his country.

"The Government of Ecuador has received an asylum request from Edward J. #Snowden," a post sent on the foreign minister’s account of the micro-blogging web site Twitter said.

The statement failed to provide further details.

A spokesman for the whistle-blower web site WikiLeaks, which claims to be assisting Snowden in his efforts to avoid extradition to the US, confirmed that Snowden planned to travel to Ecuador to seek asylum.

Ecuador has already given refuge to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who has spent the past year at the country’s embassy in London in a bid to avoid extradition to Sweden for questioning over alleged sex crimes.

The report that Snowden would seek asylum in Ecuador came just hours after he had arrived at Moscow's Sheremetyevo International Airport on a flight from Hong Kong, according to Russia's ITAR-Tass news agency, which cited unnamed officials with the airline Aeroflot.

Earlier, the Hong Kong government had confirmed that Snowdon had left the Chinese territory, where he had previously been in hiding. The authorities there allowed him to board the flight despite a US request for his extradition, which they said failed to "fully comply with the legal requirements under Hong Kong law."

The US Justice Department statement said it would continue to seek Snowden's arrest and extradition to the United States.

"We will continue to discuss this matter with Hong Kong and pursue relevant law enforcement cooperation with other countries where Mr. Snowden may be attempting to travel," Nanda Chitre, a Justice Department spokesman, said.

Snowden, a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) employee who worked for a number of subcontractors including Booz Allen at the US National Security Agency (NSA), has been on the run since leaking information about US surveillance activities to the news media a couple of weeks ago.

Among other things, the documents leaked by Snowden included an insight into a US government program known as Prism, which gives the NSA access to vast amounts of Internet data such as emails, or social media websites.

US authorities have charged the 30-year-old American citizen with theft of government property, unauthorized communication of national defense information and willful communication of classified communications intelligence to an unauthorized person. The last two charges fall under the US Espionage Act.

pfd/msh (Reuters, AFP, AP)