Exclusive | Assange: Hong Kong would have 'played by book' over Edward Snowden
Edward Snowden would likely have avoided extradition from city to US, says WikiLeaks founder
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange says Edward Snowden had little chance of being granted asylum in Hong Kong but would probably have escaped US extradition attempts because the city would "play it by the book".
Assange labelled himself a successful "people smuggler" for helping the whistle-blower escape to Russia via Chek Lap Kok airport on June 23, two weeks after the former CIA analyst first broke cover in Hong Kong.
"Snowden would be very unlikely to have received asylum in Hong Kong for a variety of political and bureaucratic reasons," Assange told the South China Morning Post yesterday from the Ecuadorean embassy in London, where he has been holed up for more than a year to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he is wanted on sexual assault allegations.
"We legally analysed his situation ... and conveyed to him that very few refugees who applied for asylum in Hong Kong had received it. However, we assessed there was a 65 per cent chance he would win his extradition case ... that he would ultimately prevail; that is the nature of the politics of the Hong Kong government and the Chinese politburo."
Snowden, a former US National Security Agency contractor, broke cover in Hong Kong on June 9 as the source of leaks exposing a vast network of secret NSA surveillance programmes.
He later disclosed documents to the Post which he claimed showed years of hacking by US spies into computers in Hong Kong and mainland China.