Edward Snowden just had another wrench thrown into his travel plans.
USA Today reports that if Edward Snowden wants to receive asylum from Russia, he has to stop leaking U.S. secrets, something that he and Julian Assange vowed he would keep doing.
Russia's President Vladimir Putin says that National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden will have to stop leaking U.S. secrets if he wants to get asylum in Russia.
"There is one condition if he wants to remain here: he must stop his work aimed at damaging our American partners. As odd as it may sound from me," Putin told a news conference in Moscow, reported RT television network.
http://www.usatoday.com/...
Ecuadorian President Correa insists that Snowden's travel freedom is completely up to Russia's discretion.
Ecuadorean officials believe Russian authorities stymied the country's efforts to approve a political asylum application from the former NSA systems analyst, according to government officials with direct knowledge of the case.
Those officials said Ecuador had been making detailed plans to receive and host Snowden. One of the officials said Russia's refusal to let Snowden leave or be picked up by Ecuadorean officials had thwarted the plans. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss the case by name.
One of the officials said Snowden had intended to travel from Moscow to the Ecuadorean capital of Quito. The official said Ecuador had also asked Russia to let Snowden take a commercial flight to meet Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino in Vietnam or Singapore, where Patino was on an official trip.
The Russians rejected all of Ecuador's requests to let Snowden leave Moscow, or to let an Ecuadorean government plane pick him up there, the official said.
Asked Sunday about those accounts, Correa responded, without elaborating, "We don't have long-range aircraft. It's a joke."
Snowden's path to Ecuador would have gone through Cuba, which said little about the case all week, including whether it would have allowed him to use its territory to transit.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
The New York Times reports that in the wake of Snowden's Ecuador plans collapsing, he has applied for asylum in 15 countries, including Russia.
Mr. Snowden has applied for political asylum in Russia, a Russian immigration official said on Monday. According to the official, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the case, Ms. Harrison hand-delivered Mr. Snowden’s application to a Russian consulate in Terminal F of the airport late Sunday evening.
A Foreign Ministry official told The Los Angeles Times on Monday that Mr. Snowden had applied to 15 different countries for political asylum, giving them the appeals at a Monday morning meeting. The official characterized the applications as “a desperate measure” on Mr. Snowden’s part, after Ecuadorean officials said that the Ecuadorean travel document he is using was invalid.
The official said that Mr. Snowden’s application for political asylum in Russia had not received a response from Russian officials in the Foreign Ministry as of Monday evening.
It usually takes a month for an application for political asylum to receive an answer from the Russian government, said Vladimir P. Lukin, Russia’s human rights commissioner, in an interview.
http://www.nytimes.com/...
So what's the next stop in the Snowden tour? President Correa summed it up best.
"The situation of Mr Snowden is a complex situation and we don't know how he will solve it."
Guardian UK