Snowden traveling with safe conduct granted by Ecuador

Edward Snowden is in Russia

Edward Snowden received a refugee document from the government of Ecuador that allows him to travel, because the United States has revoked his passport. The founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, informed this yesterday in a conference call with reporters, which clarified that this does not imply that he’s already been granted asylum and added that WikiLeaks seeks other options of asylum for Snowden.

The young man traveled last weekend from Hong Kong to Moscow to avoid extradition to the United States and even had plans to travel to Cuba but did not boarded the plane that took off from Moscow. The United States said Snowden’s whereabouts remain unknown and that he’s wanted for leaking confidential information.

Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino said from Vietnam that the regime analyzes the asylum application made by Snowden.

Yesterday the Secretary of State, John Kerry, warned China and Russia about the consequences their actions will have with their relationships, as these countries ignored the extradition request and let Snowden escape, who for his crimes of espionage could be sentenced to 30 years in prison. Given the apparent pass, the U.S. Embassy in Quito, said that Snowden, with his motivation to defend and support transparency and press freedom conflicts with the potential allies he has chosen, Russia, China and Ecuador, countries in which the freedom of speech and press are questioned, and that makes it clear that the real reason for their actions has been harming the U.S. national security

Meanwhile, the Russian President Vladimir Putin said this Tuesday that Snowden is in the transit area of an airport in Moscow and will not be extradited to the U.S., while his Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov bluntly rejected the request of the United States to deliver Snowden to them and lunged against Washington for demanding his extradition and warning them of the negative consequences if Moscow does not comply.

The announcement that Snowden would arrive to Quito and that the Ecuadorian government analyzes the application for asylum, mobilized numerous international press delegations to the capital, from where they make periodic reports.

Snowden, former technician of the CIA and the National Security Agency (NSA), revealed on last June 9 to the British newspaper The Guardian and The Washington Post that the NSA and the FBI have access to millions of phone records protected by the Patriot Act. The newspapers revealed a secret program known as PRISM, which allows the NSA to enter directly to the servers of the largest Internet companies like Google, Facebook, Microsoft or Apple, to spy on foreign contacts suspected of being terrorists.