Asylum Offer: Snowden May Pick Venezuela Over Bolivia, Nicaragua

Snowden

US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden who was just recently frustrated no country would accept his asylum request after over twenty letters were sent out is likely to accept asylum in Venezuela after a sudden twist of fate that saw three countries rise to accept him.

In an interview after speaking to Snowden online, The Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald, who first published Snowden’s leak said Venezuela is the most likely of several Latin American countries to guarantee safe passage for Snowden, especially as the US pressures other nations not to take him after Washington declared him wanted for espionage.

Nicaragua and Bolivia have also said they would accept Snowden but Venezuela is better poised “to get him safely from Moscow to Latin America and to protect him once he’s there,” Greenwald said.

“They’re a bigger country, a stronger country and a richer country with more leverage in international affairs,” said Greenwald.

Snowden has reportedly been stuck in the transit area of a Moscow airport for more than two weeks, after flying from Hong Kong after authorities there refused to hand him over to US authorities.

Greenwald said, however, that a resolution to the crisis is still unclear and could take “days or hours or weeks”.

“With no direct flights between Moscow and Caracas, Greenwald said Snowden’s challenge would be finding safe passage to Venezuela.

“Figuring out how to get to the country that has offered him asylum without the rogue or lawless empire that has proven itself willing to engage in rogue behaviour to prevent him physically from getting there, being able to stop him. That is the challenge,” he said.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said on Friday that he had decided to offer the 30-year-old American asylum, but his government confirmed it had heard nothing back so far.

“He has to be on Venezuelan territory … The reality is that he is trapped in the airport’s transit zone,” Foreign Minister Elias Jaua said in Caracas on Tuesday.