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Monday, July 08, 2013

Snowden In Venezuela? Hoax Or Truth?

By Susan Duclos

Social media has been seeing reports that NSA leaker, Edward Snowden had safely managed to land in Venezuela. The report came from PRLOG, which offered supposed quotes from a spokesman for the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, claiming those quotes were told to Al-Jazeera.

Subsequent reports show the whole story is most likely a hoax as Al-Jazeera denies the story originated with them at all.

An email that was virally circulating earlier today claimed that Edward Snowden has safely landed in Venezuela. The report, sadly, is an outright lie.

Now, the email has found its way throughout the world of social networking, and at least one website has fallen for the hoax as real: ”The Al Jazeera news agency is reporting that NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has safely landed in Venezuela. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro had offered asylum to Snowden on Friday who was believed to be waiting in transit at a Moscow airport.”

Naturally, this came as great interest to us at PoliticalBlindSpot.com. We have confirmed with Al-Jazeera contacts that wherever this hoax originated, it was not with their news agency.
 Hoax.

It is true that Venezuela, Bolivia and  Nicaragua have all offered Snowden asylum, but arrangements still must be made to get him from Moscow to the country he accepts the asylum offer from.