Government denies receiving Snowden's asylum application

Foreign Minister Luiz Alberto Figueiredo gave a statement on Monday (June 2) denying for the second time that the Brazilian government has received any formal applications for political asylum from Edward Snowden, former US National Security Agency (NSA) officer currently living in Russia.

On Sunday (June 1^st), Snowden gave an interview to Brazil's Globo TV show Fantástico, and said that he would love to live in Brazil. He also said that he did not know that the Brazilian government had denied receiving his application. He pointed out that back in July 2013, after the first reports that the US were spying on other countries emerged, he applied for asylum in 21 countries including Brazil. In his interview, he tried to speculate on a reason for his application being turned own guessing that some procedure might not have been followed.

“This is not a 'yes' or 'no' case. If we do receive an application, we are going to consider it, but nothing has come in so far,” Figueiredo told reporters. President Dilma Rousseff had expressed a similar position in December 2013 when commenting on a campaign to collect signatures in support of granting asylum to Snowden.

Journalist Glenn Greenwald, one of the journalists who leaked the allegations that the US government was monitoring communications of nationals and authorities in several countries – including President Rousseff's and those of the Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel – Brazil and Germany should offer asylum to Snowden because he “protected their right to freedom of information”. After the reports, the two countries came up with a draft resolution on the right to privacy in the digital age, which was approved by the United Nations General Assembly.

Translated by Mayra Borges