Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro offered asylum to the fugitive U.S. security contractor Edward Snowden, setting up a potential diplomatic showdown between the U.S. and South America’s biggest oil exporter.
“We decided to grant Snowden, this figure of international human rights, protection from persecution from the most powerful empire of the world,” Maduro said yesterday in a speech at a parade commemorating Venezuela’s July 5 independence day.
Venezuela’s offer was matched by Bolivia and Nicaragua, which opened their doors to the 30-year-old behind leaks on top-secret U.S. National Security Agency programs that collect telephone and Internet data. The U.S. pursuit of Snowden has roiled international relations.
“We will give asylum to this North American, who is persecuted by his compatriots, if he asks us. We are not afraid,” Bolivian President Evo Morales was quoted as saying by the Bolivian state news agency in Chipaya, Oruro today.
Morales said the offer is “justified protest” against four European countries that denied him flyover permission on U.S-fed suspicion that his plane carried Snowden from Moscow on July 2.
Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega said yesterday he would receive Snowden “circumstances permitting,” in comments broadcast on Venezuelan state television. Maduro, Ortega and Morales didn’t say if they would issue travel documents to him.Read the rest of the story HERE.
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