Snowden: I’m not hiding from justice

The former CIA employee who leaked top-secret information about US surveillance programmes said in an interview in Hong Kong he is not attempting to hide from justice but hopes to use the city as a base to reveal wrongdoing.

Edward Snowden dropped out of sight after checking out of a Hong Kong hotel on Monday. The South China Morning Post newspaper said it was able to locate and interview him yesterday. It provided brief excerpts from the interview on its website.

It said Snowden, who has been both praised and condemned for releasing documents about US phone and internet surveillance programmes, said he was “neither a traitor nor hero. I’m an American”.

Asked about his choice of Hong Kong to leak the information, Snowden said, “People who think I made a mistake in picking Hong Kong as a location misunderstand my intentions. I am not here to hide from justice; I am here to reveal criminality.”

The newspaper quoted him as saying that he had several opportunities to flee from Hong Kong, but that he “would rather stay and fight the United States government in the courts, because I have faith in Hong Kong’s rule of law”.

“My intention is to ask the courts and people of Hong Kong to decide my fate,” he said.

Snowden said he plans to stay in the city until he is “asked to leave,” the newspaper said.

Snowden, 29, arrived in Hong Kong from his home in Hawaii on May 20, just after taking leave from his National Security Agency contracting firm Booz Allen Hamilton, which has since fired him. Questions remain about why Snowden chose to go public in Hong Kong, a Chinese autonomous region that maintains a Western-style legal system and freedom of speech.

Hong Kong has an extradition agreement with the US, but there are exceptions in cases of political persecution or where there are concerns over cruel or humiliating treatment.

US authorities have yet to bring charges against Snowden or file an extradition request with Hong Kong.

Supporters of Snowden have organised a march on Saturday that will pass in front of the US Consulate.

“We call on Hong Kong to respect international legal standards and procedures relating to the protection of Snowden; we condemn the US government for violating our rights and privacy; and we call on the US not to prosecute Snowden,” the organisers said in a statement.

Meanwhile, the EU has warned President Barack Obama’s administration of “grave adverse consequences” to the rights of European citizens from the huge US Internet surveillance programme, officials said.

Viviane Reding, the EU’s justice commissioner, wrote a letter to US attorney general Eric Holder demanding “swift and concrete” answers about the spy scheme when they meet in Dublin tomorrow.

She set out seven detailed questions about the Prism spy programme, which were leaked by Snowden and revealed by The Guardian and Washington Post newspapers last week.

“Programmes such as Prism and the laws on the basis of which such programmes are authorised could have grave adverse consequences for the fundamental rights of EU citizens,” she wrote.

Her questions to Holder include whether EU citizens were targeted by the US programmes, whether Europeans would be able find out whether their data has been accessed, and whether they would be treated similarly to US nationals in such cases.

Reding said that “given the gravity of the situation” she expected “swift and concrete answers to these questions” at her meeting with Holder.

The EU official also warned that the European Parliament “is likely to assess the overall transatlantic relationship also in the light of your responses”.