14 DAY TRIAL // The United States is doing its best to stop Snowden from reaching one of the countries that has offered him asylum, namely Venezuela, Nicaragua or Bolivia, but some people are trying to help him out.
Despite statements made by Barack Obama that the authorities will not interfere with his flight to asylum, the United States has already made moves against this promise.
First, it has been reported that the US was behind the airspace blockade for the Bolivian presidential aircraft a couple of weeks ago.
Most recently, however, the Secretary of State threatened Venezuela with the closing of NATO airspace, which would push any plane that seeks to take Snowden to Caracas to cross the Pacific rather than the Atlantic to get to destination.
In light of all this information, a campaign launched on crowdfunding website Indiegogo wants to help Edward Snowden leave Russia via a private plane.
The campaign is named “Fly Edward Snowden Fly” and it was started by Christian Honey, a neuroscientist with the Oxford University, who hopes to raise money for the travel and legal costs, should he choose Venezuela as his destination.
It remains unclear what happens if he chooses another country instead, but most likely the money would simply be redirected to that purpose.
He hopes by the end of the month $200,000 will be raised to help Snowden avoid the no-fly zones across Europe and to fly from Moscow to Caracas.
Any leftover funds are set to be redirected towards financing asylum applications, legal advices and defense.
He specified a bank account will be set up on the behalf of the NSA whistleblower which will be managed by Rothera and Company LLT, the company managing WikiLeaks’ funds.
It remains to be seen if WikiLeaks will also jump in to help finance the campaign.
Back when Snowden was still in Hong Kong and he had applied for asylum in Iceland, a businessman sent out his plane in the hopes to get the NSA whistleblower out as soon as the government gave the green light. However, this never happened, so the plan was aborted.