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| A TV screen shows a news report of Edward Snowden, a former CIA employee who leaked top-secret documents about sweeping U.S. surveillance programs, at a shopping mall in Hong Kong Sunday, June 23, 2013. The former National Security Agency contractor wanted by the United States for revealing two highly classified surveillance programs has been allowed to leave for a "third country" because a U.S. extradition request did not fully comply with Hong Kong law, the territory's government said Sunday. |
MOSCOW (AP)
-- Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor wanted
by the United States for revealing highly classified surveillance
programs, flew to Russia on Sunday and planned to head to Ecuador to
seek asylum, the South American country's foreign minister and the
anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks said.
Foreign
Minister Ricardo Patino said his government has received a request for
asylum from Snowden.
WikiLeaks, which is giving Snowden legal
assistance, said his asylum request would be formally processed once he
arrived in Ecuador, the same country that has already been sheltering
the anti-secrecy group's founder Julian Assange in its London embassy.
Snowden
arrived in Moscow on an Aeroflot flight shortly after 5 p.m. (1300gmt)
Sunday after being allowed to leave Hong Kong, where he had been in
hiding for several weeks after he revealed information on the highly
classified spy programs.
Snowden was spending
the night in Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport and was booked on an Aeroflot
flight to Cuba on Monday, the Russian news agencies ITAR-Tass and
Interfax reported, citing unnamed airline officials. Aeroflot has no
direct flights from Moscow to Quito, Ecuador; travelers would have to
make connections in Paris, Rome or Washington, which could be
problematic for Snowden.
Kristinn Hrafnsson,
the WikiLeaks spokesman, told Britain's Sky News that Snowden would be
meeting with diplomats from Ecuador in Moscow. WikiLeaks said he was
being escorted by diplomats and legal advisers from the group.
The car of Ecuador's ambassador to Russia was parked outside the airport in the evening.
Assange,
who has spent a year inside the Ecuadorean Embassy in London to avoid
extradition to Sweden to face questioning about sex crime allegations,
told the Sydney Morning Herald that WikiLeaks is in a position to help
because it has expertise in international asylum and extradition law.
A
U.S. official in Washington said Snowden's passport was annulled before
he left Hong Kong, which could complicate but not thwart his travel
plans. The U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity for lack
of authorization to discuss the matter, said that if a senior official
in a country or airline ordered it, a country could overlook the
withdrawn passport.
While Patino did not say
if the asylum request would be accepted, Ecuador's President Rafael
Correa has shown repeated willingness to irk the U.S. government and he
has emerged as one of the leaders of Latin America's leftist bloc, along
with Fidel and Raul Castro of Cuba and Venezuela's late President Hugo
Chavez.
Both the United States and Britain protested his decision to grant asylum to Assange.
Critics
have suggested that asylum for Assange might be aimed partly at
blunting international criticism of Correa's own tough stance on critics
and new restrictions imposed on the news media.
The White House said President Barack Obama has been briefed on Sunday's developments by his national security advisers.
Snowden's
departure came a day after the United States made a formal request for
his extradition and gave a pointed warning to Hong Kong against delaying
the process of returning him to face trial in America.
The
Department of Justice said only that it would "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."
The
Hong Kong government said in a statement that Snowden left "on his own
accord for a third country through a lawful and normal channel."
It
acknowledged the U.S. extradition request, but said U.S. documentation
did not "fully comply with the legal requirements under Hong Kong law."
It said additional information was requested from Washington, but since
the Hong Kong government "has yet to have sufficient information to
process the request for provisional warrant of arrest, there is no legal
basis to restrict Mr. Snowden from leaving Hong Kong."
The
statement said Hong Kong had informed the U.S. of Snowden's departure.
It added that it wanted more information about alleged hacking of
computer systems in Hong Kong by U.S. government agencies which Snowden
had revealed.
Hong Kong's decision to let
Snowden go on a technicality appears to be a pragmatic move aimed at
avoiding a drawn out extradition battle. The action swiftly eliminates a
geopolitical headache that could have left Hong Kong facing pressure
from both Washington and Beijing.
Hong Kong, a
former British colony, has a high degree of autonomy and is granted
rights and freedoms not seen on mainland China, but under the city's
mini constitution Beijing is allowed to intervene in matters involving
defense and diplomatic affairs. Hong Kong has an extradition treaty with
the U.S., but the document has some exceptions, including for crimes
deemed political.
Russian officials have given
no indication that they have any interest in detaining Snowden or any
grounds to do so. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said that Russia
would be willing to consider granting asylum if Snowden were to make
such a request. Russia and the United States have no extradition treaty
that would oblige Russia to hand over a U.S. citizen at Washington's
request.
The Cuban government had no comment on Snowden's movements or reports he might use Havana as a transit point.
Snowden's
latest travels came as the South China Morning Post released new
allegations from the former NSA contractor that U.S. hacking targets in
China included the nation's cellphone companies and two universities
hosting extensive Internet traffic hubs.
He
told the newspaper that "the NSA does all kinds of things like hack
Chinese cellphone companies to steal all of your SMS data." It added
that Snowden said he had documents to support the hacking allegations,
but the report did not identify the documents. It said he spoke to the
newspaper in a June 12 interview.
With a
population of more than 1.3 billion, China has massive cellphone
companies. China Mobile is the world's largest mobile network carrier
with 735 million subscribers, followed by China Unicom with 258 million
users and China Telecom with 172 million users.
Snowden
said Tsinghua University in Beijing and Chinese University in Hong
Kong, home of some of the country's major Internet traffic hubs, were
targets of extensive hacking by U.S. spies this year. He said the NSA
was focusing on so-called "network backbones" in China, through which
enormous amounts of Internet data passes.
The
Chinese Foreign Ministry said it was aware of the reports of Snowden's
departure from Hong Kong to Moscow but did not know the specifics. It
said the Chinese central government "always respects" Hong Kong's
"handling of affairs in accordance with law." The Foreign Ministry also
noted that it is "gravely concerned about the recently disclosed
cyberattacks by relevant U.S. government agencies against China."
China's
state-run media have used Snowden's allegations to poke back at
Washington after the U.S. had spent the past several months pressuring
China on its international spying operations.
A
commentary published Sunday by the official Xinhua News Agency said
Snowden's disclosures of U.S. spying activities in China have "put
Washington in a really awkward situation."
"Washington
should come clean about its record first. It owes ... an explanation to
China and other countries it has allegedly spied on," it said. "It has
to share with the world the range, extent and intent of its clandestine
hacking programs."
