Ecuador: Snowden travel doc issued from London embassy “has no validity”

View all… As far as anyone knows, Edward Snowden remains in bureaucratic limbo inside the international transit zone in Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport. Despite scouring the area for days, reporters have yet to lay eyes on the famed NSA leaker. In a new wrinkle in the international man of mystery’s ongoing saga, Ecuador seems a bit confused about what, precisely, his asylum status is as well as what documents he has already been issued.

On June 23, 2013, Ricardo Patino, the foreign minister of Ecuador unequivocally wrote on Twitter: “The Government of Ecuador has received an asylum request from Edward J. #Snowden.”

However, Rafael Correa, Ecuador’s president, indicated in a press conference on Thursday, June 27 that this application cannot proceed unless Snowden presents himself in an Ecuadorean embassy or in Ecuador itself.

"It's a complex situation; we don't know how it'll be resolved," Correa said, according to the Associated Press.

Should Russia grant Snowden a temporary visa, it's conceivable that he could apply for asylum at the Ecuadorean embassy in Moscow. On Friday, the Ecuadorean foreign press agency, EFE, reported (Google Translate) that diplomats from Russia, Cuba, Venezuela, and Ecuador are set to meet on Monday to discuss the Snowden situation. Were Snowden to leave Moscow for Quito via normal commercial air routes, he would almost certainly have to stop over in Cuba and/or Venezuela.

Meanwhile, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has said that it is “almost certain” that his nation would grant asylum to Snowden if requested. Maduro is scheduled to be in Moscow anyway on Monday to participate in the international Forum of Gas-Exporting Countries.

To make the Snowden diplomatic situation even more complicated, US-based Spanish language television network Univision has published (Google Translate) a June 22 document issued by the Ecuadorean Embassy in London. (The embassy has also been sheltering WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for over a year now.)

The document (PDF), entitled SAFEPASS No. RE038804, reads:

The General Consul of Ecuador in London grants this SAFEPASS to the below mentioned citizen. This document is granted to allow the bearer to travel to the territory of Ecuador for the purpose of political asylum. It is requested to the relevant authorities of the transit countries to give the appropriate help so that the bearer of this document may continue his trip to Ecuador.

The name of the official at the bottom of the page is Fidel Narváez Narváez, the Ecuadorean consul in London.

According to Ecuador Secretary of Political Management Betty Tola, this letter was issued without approval of the government in Quito and was not actually signed. She also said that the document "has no validity and is the exclusive responsibility of the person who issued it” and that the person in the London embassy who leaked the document would face legal consequences.

"This demonstrates a total lack of coordination in the department of foreign affairs," Santiago Basabe, a professor of political science at the Latin American School of Social Sciences in Quito, also told the AP. "It's no small question to issue a document of safe passage or a diplomatic document for someone like Snowden without this decision being taken directly by the foreign minister or president."

We reached out to the London embassy by e-mail and to the Ecuadorean president and foreign minister on Twitter to inquire about the document, but we did not receive an immediate reply.

While Ecuador is trying to sort out Edward Snowden’s paperwork, his father went on the Today Show to defend his son.

“At this point I don't feel that he's committed treason. He has in fact broken US law, in a sense that he has released classified information,” Lonnie Snowden told NBC’s Michael Isikoff. “And if folks want to classify him as a traitor, in fact he has betrayed his government. But I don't believe that he's betrayed the people of the United States. “

Ecuadorean President Correa, for his part, also said at the Quito press conference that he has renounced a multimillion-dollar free-trade deal between Ecuador and the United States, which was up for renewal next month.

"Do not threaten us with removing the preferential tariffs. We unilaterally and irrevocably waive them,” he said. “You can keep them.”

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