“We have received the asylum request letter,” AFP quoted Maduro as saying on Monday.
“He (Snowden) will have to decide when he flies, if he finally wants to fly here,” the president noted.
“We told this young man, ‘you are being persecuted by the empire, come here,'” Maduro said, referring to the United States.
Snowden, a former CIA employee, has sought political asylum in 27 countries, including several in Latin America.
Snowden has been holed up at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport since June 23 when he travelled from Hong Kong to avoid US extradition.
The US has revoked Snowden’s passport, with State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki saying the fugitive “should not be allowed to proceed in any further international travel, other than is necessary to return him to the US.”
Snowden leaked two top secret US government spying programs under which the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) are eavesdropping on millions of American and European phone records and the Internet data from major Internet companies such as Facebook, Yahoo, Google, Apple, and Microsoft.
On June 9, Snowden admitted his role in the leaks in a 12-minute video recorded interview published by The Guardian.
In the interview, he denounced what he described as systematic surveillance of innocent US citizens, saying his “sole motive is to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them.”
The NSA scandal took even broader dimensions when Snowden revealed information about its espionage activities targeting friendly countries.
Republished with permission from: Press TV