US Threatened Germany Over Helping Snowden

It would appear that the United States did in fact strong arm at least one country to keep them from offering asylum to Edward Snowden or assisting him in procuring travel arrangements via their country, according to Snowden’s associate, Glenn Greenwald.

The German Vice Chancellor, Sigmar Gabriel, said this week that if they helped the NSA whistleblower in any way the United States would stop relaying all intelligence information to Berlin. “They told us they’d cease notifying us of schemes and other intelligence issues,” Gabriel said.

Gabriel commended the work of other reporters and Greenwald as he presented a speech about the journalistic attempts made concerning the Snowden leaks. The Vice Chancellor expressed sorrow that the former Booz Allen employee was made to seek political refuge in “Putin’s autocratic Russia.”

Greenwald questioned Gabriel as to why Germany did not offer Snowden asylum — because under international law, after asylum has been given, the subject is no longer to be considered a fugitive. Based on The Intercept, the Vice Chancellor reacted by saying:

“That will mean, if the threat were carried out, the Americans would enable the German people to stay exposed to a brewing strike by withholding that information from their authorities, found by the Americans.”

If for some reason Vice Chancellor Gabriel wasn’t being true in his comments, his words might be deemed a fear approach as a way to get the citizens of Germany to consider that asylum for Snowden would be a detriment to their well-being. Either way you look at it, the citizens of Germany and the USA, along with their freedoms, come out on the losing end.

SOURCE:

“US Government Threatened Germany Over Aiding Snowden.” The AntiMedia. N.p., 19 Mar. 2015. Web. 20 Mar. 2015. http://theantimedia.org/us-government-threatened-germany-over-aiding-snowden/

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