Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has offered asylum to U.S. intelligence leaker Edward Snowden, Venezuela’s official news agency AVN reported Friday.
It gave no additional information.
Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega also said Friday he would grant Snowden asylum in his country if “circumstances permit.”
The announcements came as an Icelandic lawmaker said Snowden would not get citizenship there, as he requested, because Parliament refused to vote on it before ending its current session.
Snowden left Hong Kong last month for Moscow. Russian authorities have said he remains in an airport transit area –technically a free man, but unable to travel after the United States revoked his passport.
The United States has been pressing countries to refuse Snowden entry and hand him over to face espionage charges. His disclosures about widespread U.S. surveillance of telephones and Internet users in the United States and abroad — based largely on documents he has acknowledged taking while a National Security Agency contractor in Hawaii — have created a political storm at home and diplomatic headaches overseas for President Barack Obama.
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