Snowden's Asylum Case Strenghtens As US Tries to Interfere

The more the United States tries to force countries to block Edward Snowden’s asylum request, the more his case strengthens in his efforts to get the protection he needs to continue revealing how much the NSA has been overstepping its boundaries.

Snowden is currently believed to still be in the transit area of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport and has already received asylum offers from Nicaragua, Venezuela and most recently, Bolivia.

So far, the NSA whistleblower has applied for asylum in dozens of countries, but only these three have given a positive response, while others said that Snowden needed to be in the country to file such a request.

And since Snowden can’t be in a dozen places at once, those requests will probably go to waste.

The more the US government puts pressures on the world’s governments to refuse Snowden’s request and to extradite the whistleblower, the more politicians will try to show that their internal politics are not influenced by the United States, The Guardian reports.

“Interfering with the right to seek asylum is a serious problem in international law. It is further evidence that Snowden has a well-founded fear of persecution. This will be relevant to any state when considering an application,” Michael Bochenek, director of law and policy at Amnesty International, says.

Furthermore, he mentions that international law states that someone who fears persecution should not be returned to that country, and thus the extradition refusals from so many countries have solid grounds.

One of the countries having already offered asylum to Edward Snowden is Venezuela. Despite having extradition treaties with the United States, they are using clauses that allow it to reject requests if it believes they are politically motivated.

Nicolas Maduro, the country’s president, has stated countless times that Edward Snowden was simply a man who told the truth and went as far as to harshly criticize the United States.

Furthermore, Bochenek mentions that the opinion has shifted in the South American countries particularly due to the pressures put by the US authorities.