adminBefore departing, Morales said the ordeal “was like a near 13-hour kidnapping.”
The plane took off at 11:45am local time and was expected to stop in Las Palmas on the Spanish Canary Islands for servicing before completing its journey to Bolivia.
Austrian and Bolivian officials insisted Snowden was not aboard the plane.
But the diversion has sparked a diplomatic row, with Bolivia announcing protest rallies outside the embassies of European countries that denied Morales entry into their airspace, forcing his landing in Vienna.
The incident happened hours after Morales said his country would consider a request for political asylum if Snowden submitted one.
Snowden has been holed up in an airport transit area in the Russian capital since June 23. He is seeking to avoid US espionage charges for revealing a vast surveillance programme to collect phone and Internet data.
Speaking to journalists at Vienna airport, Morales complained of some European states’ decisions to deny him access to their airspace.
“I am not a delinquent,” he said, adding that the countries concerned — France, Italy and Portugal — would have to explain themselves.
“This is not a provocation against Evo Morales but against Bolivia and all of Latin America. It’s an attack on Latin America by certain European states,” he added.
Morales said he could not understand why the countries thought Snowden was travelling with him.
“The United States and almost every European country has intelligence agents all over the world and this man (Snowden) is not a suitcase, an animal or a fly that I can just put in my plane and take with me to Bolivia,” he told journalists.
Bolivia will now study the possible consequences for these countries’ actions, Morales said. — AFP.
Online Reporter