Edward Snowden. Photo by EPA/BGNES
The US has sent extradition requests for fugitive former NSA employee Edward Snowden to five countries, WikiLeaks said in its Twitter account on Wednesday.
“Extradition reqs [requests] for Snowden already sent by US to Hong Kong, Venezuela, Bolivia, Iceland, Ireland,” WikiLeaks said, as cited by RIA Novosti.
Snowden, 29, admitted to leaking a secret court order to the media in early June, according to which US telecom company Verizon was required to provide data from millions of customers to the US authorities for three months.
He also claims an Internet scouring program code-named PRISM allowed the NSA and the FBI to tap into nine US Internet companies and to gather all kinds of information from users, including videos, emails, searches and images.
RIA Novosti reminds that Snowden arrived in Moscow from Hong Kong on June 23. He has since remained in geopolitical limbo in the transit zone of Sheremetyevo Airport, while trying to find a country to grant him asylum.