U.S. sent extradition requests for Snowden, WikiLeaks says

PanARMENIAN.Net - The United States sent extradition requests for former U.S. intelligence contractor Edward Snowden to five countries, WikiLeaks said in its Twitter account on Wednesday, July 17, according to RIA Novosti.

“Extradition reqs [requests] for Snowden already sent by U.S. to Hong Kong, Venezuela, Bolivia, Iceland, Ireland,” WikiLeaks, an anti-secrecy group that has been assisting the former intelligence contractor, reported.

Snowden, 29, admitted to leaking a secret court order to the media in early June, according to which U.S. telecom company Verizon was required to provide data from millions of customers to the U.S. authorities for three months.

He also claims an Internet scouring program code-named PRISM allowed the NSA and the FBI to tap into nine U.S. Internet companies and to gather all kinds of information from users, including videos, emails, searches and images.

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.

Last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Moscow would consider granting Snowden asylum under the condition that he stop his work aimed at “damaging our American partners,” an option Snowden initially rejected, but apparently accepted after failing to secure safe passage to Latin American countries that had offered him asylum - Bolivia, Nicaragua and Venezuela.