Maduro: Venezuela ready to consider asylum for NSA leaker Snowden

PanARMENIAN.Net - Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said his country was ready to consider an issue of granting asylum to Edward Snowden, the former CIA employee wanted by the United States for leaking state secrets, RIA Novosti reported.

“We would consider it, because the asylum is a measure of humanitarian protection and is a mechanism of the international humanitarian law, which is popular in Latin America and was always used to protect helpless,” Maduro said.

“No one has the right to spy after someone else and this youngster [Snowden], who told the world about it, deserves humanitarian protection,” Maduro said adding that Snowden has not yet officially requested asylum in Venezuela.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday that Snowden, whose whereabouts had been the subject of international speculation for the past two days, was in the transit area of a Moscow airport.

Snowden is wanted by the United States for disclosing a top-secret surveillance program that allegedly targeted millions of Americans. He took a plane from Hong Kong to Moscow on Sunday accompanied by WikiLeaks representative Sarah Harrison, the organization said in a statement.