Comment
Comment
re: #80 Gus
I’m a journalist. I mainly report on Mr. “X.” I also belong to an organization that’s financed by a media competitor and ally. I’m also a member of the board of said organization. We also raise funds for Mr. “X.”
The relationships and conflicts of interest are even more tangled than they used to be now that Snowden has joined the board as well. You have a fugitive on the board of an organization with the reporters who cover him the most, and that org funnels donations to another organization (which those reporters also cover heavily), and that second organization then expends its resources on assisting that very same fugitive board member.
Accompanying Mr. Snowden on the Aeroflot airliner that carried him on Sunday from Hong Kong to Moscow — continuing a global cat-and-mouse chase that might have been borrowed from a Hollywood screenplay — was a British WikiLeaks activist, Sarah Harrison. The group’s founder, Julian Assange, who has been given refuge for the last year in Ecuador’s embassy in London, met last week with Ecuador’s foreign minister to support Mr. Snowden’s asylum request. And Baltasar Grzon, the legal director of WikiLeaks and a former Spanish judge, is leading a volunteer legal team advising him on how to stay out of an American prison.
“Mr. Snowden requested our expertise and assistance,” Mr. Assange said in a telephone interview from London on Sunday night. “We’ve been involved in very similar legal and diplomatic and geopolitical struggles to preserve the organization and its ability to publish.”
By Mr. Assange’s account, the group helped obtain and deliver a special refugee travel document to Mr. Snowden in Hong Kong that, with his American passport revoked, may now be crucial in his bid to travel onward from Moscow.
Today, Thursday 1st August at 15:50 MSK, Edward Snowden was granted temporary asylum in Russia. He left Sheremetyevo airport in Moscow with WikiLeaks staffer and legal advisor Sarah Harrison who has accompanied him during his 39 day stay in the transit zone and continues to do so. Ms Harrison has remained with Mr Snowden at all times to protect his safety and security, including during his exit from Hong Kong. They departed from the airport together in a taxi and are headed to a secure, confidential place.
On 16th July Mr Snowden made a request for temporary asylum to Russia. Despite the ongoing pressure from the United States, which has been trying to interfere with this sovereign process in violation of the UN Protocol on the Rights of Refugees, Russia has done the right thing and granted Mr Snowden temporary asylum. The certificate of temporary asylum by the Russian Federation lasts for one year and affords Mr Snowden the right to live in and travel around Russia, where he can now plan his next steps in safety. On receiving his asylum certificate Mr Snowden said: “Over the past eight weeks we have seen the Obama administration show no respect for international or domestic law, but in the end the law is winning. I thank the Russian Federation for granting me asylum in accordance with its laws and international obligations.”
WikiLeaks, whilst being a publishing organisation, also fights for the rights and protections of journalistic sources, and so has taken a leading role in assisting Mr Snowden secure his safety. Mr Snowden, an American citizen, was forced to flee his country to enable him to safely reveal to the public the crimes of his government. President Barack Obama while elected on a platform promising to protect whistleblowers, has now prosecuted more national security whistleblowers than all other presidents in United States history combined. This bellicose response from the US administration makes it clear that Snowden could not receive a fair trial. Assange said “This is another victory in the fight against Obama’s war on whistleblowers. This battle has been won, but the war continues. The United States can no longer continue the surveillance of world citizens and its digital colonization of sovereign nations. The public will no longer stand for it. Whistleblowers will continue to appear until the government abides by its own laws and rhetoric.”
WikiLeaks commends Russia for accepting Snowden’s request and supporting him when many countries felt so compromised by US threats that they could not. Throughout Snowden’s stay in the airport it has been heartening to see citizens of the United States, of Russia and the world supporting Mr Snowden. WikiLeaks would also like to extend their gratitude to the airport staff who have assisted in making the extended stay of Mr Snowden and Ms Harrison as comfortable and secure as possible, despite the difficult conditions.
Mr Snowden and Ms Harrison have been staying in the airport for almost six weeks, having landed on an Aeroflot flight from Hong Kong on the 23rd June. They had been booked on a connecting flight the following day. Mr Snowden intended to request asylum in Latin America. However, after Mr Snowden’s departure was made public, the United States government canceled his passport, which rendered onward travel impossible.
From within the transit zone of the airport, Mr Snowden and Ms Harrison spent a number of weeks prior to his Russian application assessing the options available to him to ensure his future safety. Without a passport and no immediate offers of the necessary safe passage, travel was impossible.
Mr. Assange, who has resided in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London for a year because of his fugitive status, said his group had arranged for Mr. Snowden to travel via a “special refugee travel document” issued by Ecuador last Monday — days before the United States announced the criminal charges against him and revoked his passport. Mr. Assange said he believed that Ecuador was still considering Mr. Snowden’s asylum application.
“He left Hong Kong with that document,” Mr. Assange said.
Mr. Assange told Mr. Shane that he had raised Mr. Snowden’s case with Ecuador’s foreign minister in a meeting at the embassy last Monday.
Mr. Assange said it was unclear whether Mr. Snowden’s passport was revoked before he left Hong Kong. But, he said, Mr. Snowden was informed of the revocation when he landed in Moscow. He said it was uncertain whether and where Mr. Snowden might be able to travel from Moscow using the Ecuadorean document, which he described as a “safe pass.”
An official in Ecuador told The Associated Press on Thursday that a special travel document provided to Edward Snowden to help him travel from Hong Kong after his American passport was revoked is genuine but not valid, since it was issued by someone without the authority to do so.
…
The document, called a “safepass,” is essentially a sheet of standard office paper, which says that it was issued on Saturday in London, where the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who has said he assisted Mr. Snowden, has been living in Ecuador’s embassy for more than a year.
