MOSCOW - Fugitive US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden was denied asylum by a host of countries Tuesday after applying for a safe haven in 21 nations spanning the globe in hopes of winning protection from American justice.
Poland immediately rejected the petitions while an Indian foreign ministry spokesman said “we have concluded that we see no reason to accede to the request.” The Netherlands also said no. And a spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin said Snowden himself had decided to scrap his petition with Moscow - where he has been stranded in an airport transit zone since June 23 - after the Kremlin chief said he wanted him to stop releasing damaging allegations about the United States.
“He abandoned his intention and his request to receive the chance of staying in Russia,” Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
Snowden told Poland in an asylum request that he risks the death penalty at home, after he disclosed Washington’s alleged violations of the US constitution and global treaties.
Holed up in the transit zone at a Moscow airport for 10 days since fleeing Hong Kong, the 30-year-old is seeking asylum in 20 countries.
The WikiLeaks anti-secrecy website that is helping the 30-year-old former National Security Agency contractor said he had sent out applications to 13 European countries as well as six Latin American nations along with China and India.
A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman in Beijing said: “I’ve seen some reports of his petition for political asylum in some countries but I have no information about that.”
Austria and Finland as well as Iceland and Norway and Spain confirmed they had received the request but argued it was legally invalid because it was not filed from inside their respective countries. Ireland too said it could not accept an asylum request brought in this way.
Italy said it was “evaluating” the request which it dubbed “irregular” because it was not made in person. And Germany said Snowden’s request would be reviewed “according to the law”, while France and Switzerland had not yet received the asylum application.
But leftist Bolivian President Evo Morales said Tuesday his Latin American country was willing to consider giving Snowden asylum.
Snowden also found support from another leftist Latin American leader Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela. “What he did was reveal a big truth so that we could avoid a war,” he said during a two-day visit to Moscow during which he was attending an energy summit.
But Maduro refused to entertain speculation that he might take Snowden on a plane with him from Moscow - a possibility raised both by Russian media and political observers of the explosive case.
“These are the old, bad tools of political aggression,” Snowden said in a statement published by the anti-secrecy WikiLeaks group. “Their purpose is to frighten, not me, but those who would come after me.”
An asylum application letter Snowden sent to Poland stressed that US President Barack Obama “is not afraid of whistleblowers like me, Bradley Manning or Thomas Drake. We are stateless, imprisoned, or powerless.
Snowden’s latest major leak about US spying on EU countries has angered many European governments and threatened to derail preparations for delicate talks on a massive free trade deal between Washington and Brussels. European Parliament president Martin Schulz stressed that he was “sympathetic” to an asylum request by fugitive US intelligence leaker Snowden and compared reports of US spying on EU offices to “KGB methods”.
WikiLeaks said Snowden had also applied for asylum in Brazil, Cuba, Ecuador, and Nicaragua.
US Secretary of State John Kerry said he raised the sensitive issue of secrets leaker Edward Snowden in talks with his counterpart from Russia, where the US fugitive is in diplomatic limbo.
But Kerry told reporters after an Asia security summit in Brunei that his discussions with Sergei Lavrov failed to yield any progress on an impasse that has further strained testy US-Russian ties.
Kerry said the issue was more a matter for justice officials. “So it is fair to say that we didn’t discuss any substantive progress but I certainly raised from our point of view how it fits within the context of our relationship...,” he said.
French President Francois Hollande on Tuesday called for the European Union to take a common stand over allegations of Washington spying on its allies.
“Europe must have a coordinated, common position on the requirements we need to come up with and the explanations we must ask for,” Hollande said as he met his Lithuanian counterpart Dalia Grybauskaite, whose country currently holds the EU presidency, in Paris.
Media reports that the US National Security Agency (NSA) bugged European offices and embassies have sparked widespread concern in Europe, with Hollande on Monday warning that they threatened talks due to start next week on a crucial EU-US free trade pact.