Edward Snowden is a wanted man without a nation, and increasingly a man no nation wants.Stuck in purgatory in the transit zone of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport, Snowden has been sending requests to countries—mostly in Europe but also in Latin America, China and India—to grant him asylum. Thus far the only responses have been flat-out rejections by Poland, Brazil, and India, and being told that he has to make his request from their soil by Ireland, Austria, Finland, Spain, and Norway.With his passport revoked and no visa, Snowden can’t leave the airport to go into Russia and can’t get on a plane to anywhere else without some sort of diplomatic intervention on his behalf.And as you can see in the map above (which appears to be getting updates as news comes in) he's running out of options. Countries flagged red have told him no, and green are countries with US extradition treaties that haven't yet responded to his requests. Yellow countries have taken a narrow course for now, saying that Snowden can't apply for asylum until he's within their borders. Finally, China is listed as purple because it has no extradition treaty with the US.Indeed the Snowden case has lead to strange bedfellows the world over. In France, both the far-right Front National and left-wing Front de Gauche have both praised Snowden and called for the socialist government to grant him asylum, as a reward for revealing that the French embassy in Washington was also a target for US intelligence. Calling them bedfellows is maybe an overstatement, as the leader of the far-right, Marine La Pen accused the leader of the left, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, of just jumping on the pro-Snowden bandwagon. Even when politicians agree, they can find a way to grandstand and smear each other.Ecuador won’t get Snowden out of Russia, but Correa left the door open for providing asylum if Snowden can get to Ecuadorian territory or an embassy. "The right of asylum request is one thing but helping someone travel from one country to another — Ecuador has never done this.” Correa said in an interview.Only Venezuela’s president has expressed his support for Snowden, but he said Snowden has not yet asked him for asylum.From the beginning Snowden made it clear that he knew his actions would lead to this. In a statement released via Wikileaks Monday, he called the Obama administration’s efforts to keep him from finding asylum “old, bad tools of political aggression,” and accused them of “using citizenship as a weapon.”Putin said that Russia would not extradite Snowden, because Russia doesn't extradite people and President Obama seems disinclined to drag him out of the airport using force. So for now, Snowden remains stuck in the airport. Hope he has enough to read.
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Ecuador seemed like a likely port in the storm until Vice President Joe Biden called up the Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa and charmed Correa (I guess?) into saying that his country’s efforts to help Snowden had been a mistake, including the temporary travel document that got Snowden from Hong Kong to Moscow.According to Kremlin officials, Snowden withdrew his asylum application. Vladimir Putin had said that Russia would only allow Snowden into the motherland if he promised to stop leaking secrets that could damage Russia’s “American partners.” Putin himself couldn’t resist pointing out how strange it was to hear that sentiment from the lips of a former KGB agent.India didnt turn Snowden down for political reasons. It's just that the last thing we need is another software engineer.
— Rohan Joshi (@mojorojo) July 2, 2013
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