BEIJING -- Hong Kong authorities allowed wanted former U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden to fly out of the city on Sunday after finding that documents supplied by Washington seeking his arrest did not “fully comply with the legal requirements under Hong Kong law.”
Snowden was en route to a “third country,” officials in the Chinese territory said. The South China Morning Post, a Hong Kong newspaper that had repeated contact with the American during his month-long stay in the city, reported that Snowden left on a flight bound for Moscow.
Russia’s ITAR-Tass news agency, citing an unidentified Aeroflot airlines official, said Snowden would fly from Moscow to Cuba on Monday and then on to Venezuela. Last week, Iceland had also been mentioned as a possible destination for Snowden.
Exactly how Snowden's departure was arranged was unclear, but WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has praised him as a "hero," and according to the organization's Twitter feed, Snowden was accompanied on the flight to Russia by WikiLeaks legal advisors.
"WikiLeaks has assisted Mr. Snowden's political asylum in a democratic country, travel papers and safe exit from Hong Kong," the group said.
U.S. authorities are seeking to prosecute Snowden for disclosing to the media a trove of documents detailing secret American surveillance programs. On Friday, U.S. authorities revealed that Snowden had been charged with theft of government property and two violations of the Espionage Act: unauthorized communication of national defense information and providing U.S. classified intelligence to an unauthorized person.
Hong Kong officials said Sunday that U.S. authorities had asked Hong Kong to issue a provisional arrest warrant for Snowden but that without “sufficient information to process the request for provisional warrant of arrest, there is no legal basis to restrict Mr. Snowden from leaving Hong Kong.”
Hong Kong authorities said they had informed the U.S. government of Snowden's departure and said they would continue to seek details from Washington about Snowden’s revelations that U.S. hacking activities had targeted facilities in Hong Kong.
Snowden’s departure from Hong Kong offered both officials in the semi-autonomous Chinese territory and authorities in Beijing a face-saving if inelegant solution to a complicated situation that threatened to strain relations for years had Snowden exercised his various rights to appeal or applied for asylum.