Germany wants Snowden to give spy evidence in Moscow
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German lawmakers looking into secret US monitoring of Angela Merkel’s mobile phone said yesterday they would try to take evidence from former US spy agency contractor Edward Snowden in Moscow without compromising his status there.
Officials from Merkel’s government and the centre-left ruled out bringing him to Germany.
“I made clear again that we will stick to our decision from the summer that Mr Snowden has no right to asylum in Germany because he is not a political refugee,” Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich told reporters.
“We must now talk about the circumstances under which it could be possible to hear Mr Snowden in Moscow and get further information from him, if he has any,” he said after a meeting of a parliamentary committee which monitors intelligence agencies.
Last week, opposition lawmaker Hans-Christian Stroebele met Snowden in Moscow and said the 30-year-old American was ready to come to Germany to assist the investigations into wholesale electronic snooping by the United States which has angered its close ally Germany.
Revelations of eavesdropping by the US National Security Agency and Britain’s GCHQ, including from their embassies a stone’s throw from the Brandenburg Gate, have struck a raw nerve in Germany.
Merkel has complained to Washington but stresses Germany’s gratitude for American support in the Cold War and the vital importance of the alliance. She is unlikely to agree to asylum for a man branded a traitor by the US government.
Thomas Oppermann, an interior policy expert with the Social Democrats who are expected to form a coalition government with Merkel’s conservatives soon, echoed Friedrich’s remarks, saying: “A hearing in Germany is not up for debate at the moment but we want to see first whether questioning is possible in Moscow.”
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