Dusseldorf It’s a story straight out of a Hollywood thriller. Edward Snowden flew to Hong Kong in the summer of 2013. He is an IT specialist for the NSA espionage service, a first-degree secret bearer. Then the outrageous happens. On June 9, Snowden revealed himself in a video interview with Britain’s Guardian as the source behind the revelations that have had the world in suspense for days.
Snowden’s revelations prove that US intelligence agencies were surveilling hundreds of millions of citizens around the world, including its own population — all without cause, let alone authorization. US politicians had always publicly denied this practice before.
From that moment on, Snowden becomes the hunted. The US secret service is after him, every police officer in Hong Kong is looking for him. And every journalist. Now he has to disappear, become invisible, in order to survive. And Snowden finds a solution.
He hides where nobody would look for him: with asylum seekers in the darkest corners of Hong Kong. Refugees Ajith, Vanessa, Supun and Nadeeka house Snowden for two weeks. Then he escapes to Moscow. Snowden now lives there with his wife and child.
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In the last episode of Handelsblatt Crime, investigative chief Sönke Iwersen told the story of these four lifesavers from Snowden. Why they fled to Hong Kong, what happened to them before in Sri Lanka and the Philippines. And what happened to them after they helped Snowden in 2016. Three of them now live in Canada.
In an interview with the Handelsblatt, Nadeeka and Supun sent a personal message to Edward Snowden. You can hear what it is here on Handelsblatt Crime.
More: You can hear the last episode of Handelsblatt Crime here.
Handelsblatt Crime appears every 14 days and can be heard wherever there are podcasts.