Snowden Slams Obama As Asylum List Revealed
02/07/2013 11:30
Snowden Slams Obama As Asylum List Revealed
The 21 countries asked to offer asylum to Edward Snowden have been revealed - as the whistleblower accused Barack Obama of "deception".
Requests have been handed to Austria, Bolivia, Brazil, China, Cuba, Finland, France, Germany, India, Italy, Ireland, the Netherlands, Nicaragua, Norway, Poland, Russia, Spain, Switzerland and Venezuela.
Delivered to an official at the Russian consulate at Sheremetyevo Airport in Moscow on Monday night, the pleas follow those previously made to Ecuador and Iceland.
The list emerged after Snowden accused the US President of denying him a right to asylum and of putting political pressure on countries from which he has requested refuge.
In a statement published on the WikiLeaks website, the former National Security Agency worker said Mr Obama was practising the "old, bad tools of political aggression".
Snowden, who also worked as an analyst for the CIA, leaked details of secret surveillance operations in the UK and US, fled to Hong Kong and then to Russia after White House officials requested his extradition.
He is believed to have been staying in the arrivals area of Moscow airport since June 23, but has not been seen in public.
While thanking "friends new and old" for his continued liberty, he said in the statement: "On Thursday, President Obama declared before the world that he would not permit any diplomatic 'wheeling and dealing' over my case.
"Yet now it is being reported that after promising not to do so, the President ordered his Vice President to pressure the leaders of nations from which I have requested protection to deny my asylum petitions.
"This kind of deception from a world leader is not justice, and neither is the extralegal penalty of exile. These are the old, bad tools of political aggression. Their purpose is to frighten, not me, but those who would come after me."
Snowden said the White House was "using citizenship as a weapon" and had denied him the right to seek asylum by revoking his passport, "leaving me a stateless person" and stopping him from "exercising a basic human right ... the right to seek asylum".
He added: "In the end the Obama administration is not afraid of whistleblowers like me, Bradley Manning or Thomas Drake.
"We are stateless, imprisoned, or powerless. No, the Obama administration is afraid of you. It is afraid of an informed, angry public demanding the constitutional government it was promised - and it should be."
Snowden has also written to the President of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, praising his country's "bravery" in considering his request for political asylum.
He accuses the US government of a "grave violation" of human rights and of "unwarranted spying against innocent people".
