Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has confirmed that his country received an official request for asylum from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden on Monday. This comes after Nicaragua received his asylum application at its Moscow embassy.
“We received a letter requesting asylum” from Snowden, revealed Maduro, during a press conference prior to a meeting with Panama’s president, Ricardo Martinelli.
The fugitive “will need to decide when he will fly here,” added the Venezuelan head of state. Maduro Maduro last week said that his country would provide Snowden with a safe haven from “persecution from the empire.”
Earlier on Monday Nicaragua confirmed that it also received Snowden’s official asylum request. “Nicaragua is an open country that respects the right to asylum,” the country’s ambassador to Russia Luis Alberto Molina Cuadra told RT
“It is possible that Snowden’s application is already being looked at. It will be considered at the highest level, by the top politicians of our country.”
On Friday Nicaragua’s Sandinista President Daniel Ortega declared that he would receive the US citizen “with pleasure”, if “circumstances permit”.
Snowden’s initial application letter, with the dateline “Moscow, June 30” has also been revealed.
In it the former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor says “…it is unlikely I would receive a fair trial or proper treatment [in the US]” and claims an imminent return to his country of birth could result in the “possibility of life in prison or even death.”
Snowden, who last month leaked confidential information revealing NSA’s massive electronic surveillance program, known as PRISM, is currently facing charges of theft of government property, and two counts of espionage – one for leaking classified to data to those without a security clearance.
The 30-year-old has not been seen in public since late June in Hong Kong, but is widely believed to be in the transit zone at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport.