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The SCMP, in a teaser posted online before it publishes the full interview, said the former subcontractor for the National Security Agency would offer “more explosive details on US surveillance targets”.
Snowden would also discuss his fears for his family and his immediate plans, the newspaper said, after it interviewed the 29-year-old one-time CIA analyst earlier yesterday at a secret location in the semi-autonomous Chinese territory.
“People who think I made a mistake in picking HK as a location misunderstand my intentions. I am not here to hide from justice; I am here to reveal criminality,” it quoted him as saying.
Snowden vowed to fight any extradition attempt by the US government, the newspaper said, after he came to Hong Kong on May 20 and leaked a global eavesdropping operation by the NSA to the Guardian and the Washington Post.
“My intention is to ask the courts and people of Hong Kong to decide my fate. I have been given no reason to doubt your system,” he said.
Many lawmakers in Washington are up in arms after Snowden leaked the NSA’s monitoring of private users’ web traffic and phone records, in a worldwide trawl that the White House says was needed to keep Americans safe from terror.
Criminal investigations are underway, but so far the United States has not filed a formal extradition request to Hong Kong, a former British colony that retained its separate legal system when it returned to Chinese rule in 1997.
Ultimately, Beijing retains control over defence and foreign affairs — and can veto extradition rulings made by Hong Kong courts.
Hong Kong press reports said that Snowden was on the hunt for representation from prominent lawyers well-versed in human rights and asylum cases.
He won support from the city’s feisty pro-democracy movement, with a demonstration in the works for Saturday. Organisers said the protesters, set to include Hong Kong lawmakers, would march first to the US consulate and then government headquarters.
“We should protect him. We are calling on the HK government to defend freedom of speech,” Tom Grundy, a spokesman for the organisers, told AFP yesterday.
“We don’t know what law he may or may not have broken but if Beijing has a final say, they don’t have to extradite him if he is a political dissident,” he said.
A protracted battle over Snowden’s fate threatens to test new attempts to build Sino-US bridges as shown at a weekend summit in California between the nations’ presidents, Barack Obama and Xi Jinping. The European Union has already expressed disquiet at the giant scale of the NSA operation.
White House spokesman Jay Carney on Tuesday said that Obama had signed an executive directive requiring protections for intelligence community whistle-blowers who use “appropriate” channels — implicitly not leaks to newspapers as Snowden did — to expose alleged wrongdoing.
But Carney fended off all questions about Snowden and declined to characterise his actions while investigations are underway.
On Capitol Hill, the language was blunter.
The Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives, John Boehner, described Snowden’s leaks as a “giant” violation of law.
“He’s a traitor,” Boehner told ABC News in an interview. — AFP.
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