A former contractor for the US National Security Agency, charged by the United States with espionage, was allowed to leave Hong Kong on Sunday because a US extradition request did not comply with the law, the Hong Kong government said.
Edward Snowden left for Moscow on Sunday and his final destination may be Cuba, Ecuador, Iceland or Venezuela, according to various reports. The move is bound to infuriate Washington, wherever he ends up.
Russia’s Interfax news agency quoted a source at the Aeroflot airline as saying there was a ticket in Snowden’s name for a Moscow-Cuba flight. Itar-Tass cited a source as saying Snowden would fly from Havana to the Venezuelan capital, Caracas.
The South China Morning Post said his final destination may be Ecuador or Iceland.
A spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin said he was unaware of Snowden’s whereabouts or travel plans.
The WikiLeaks anti-secrecy website said it helped Snowden find “political asylum in a democratic country”. It did not elaborate, other than to say Snowden was “currently over Russian airspace” with WikiLeaks legal advisers.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said last week he would not leave the sanctuary of the Ecuadorean Embassy in London even if Sweden stopped pursuing sexual assault claims against him because he feared arrest on the orders of the United States.
US authorities have charged Snowden with theft of US government property, unauthorised communication of national defense information and wilful communication of classified communications intelligence to an unauthorised person, with the latter two charges falling under the US Espionage Act.
The United States had asked Hong Kong, a special administrative region (SAR) of China, to send him home.
Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said earlier this month that Russia would consider granting Snowden asylum if he were to ask for it and pro-Kremlin lawmakers supported the idea, but there has been no indication he has done so.
The South China Morning Post earlier quoted Snowden offering new details about the United States’ spy activities, including accusations of US hacking of Chinese mobile telephone companies and targeting China’s Tsinghua University.
Documents previously leaked by Snowden revealed that the NSA has access to vast amounts of internet data such as emails, chat rooms and video from large companies, including Facebook and Google, under a government program known as Prism.
The government statement said Hong Kong had written to the United States “requesting clarification” of earlier reports about the hacking of computer systems in Hong Kong by US government agencies.
“The HKSAR Government will continue to follow up on the matter, so as to protect the legal rights of the people of Hong Kong,” it said.
China’s Xinhua news agency, referring to Snowden’s accusations about the hacking of Chinese targets, said they were “clearly troubling signs”.
It added: “They demonstrate that the United States, which has long been trying to play innocent as a victim of cyber attacks, has turned out to be the biggest villain in our age.”