Edward Snowden vanishes in Moscow!

Fugitive US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden on Monday vanished in Moscow after failing to take a flight to Cuba on which he was booked, as Washington angrily accused Russia of helping him escape the clutches of US justice.

Snowden, who embarrassed US President Barack Obama with his revelations of massive surveillance programmes, failed to appear on the Aeroflot flight to Havana from where he had been expected to continue to Ecuador and claim asylum.

Russia’s Interfax news agency, known for its strong security contacts, confirmed that he was not on the Havana flight and quoted an informed source as saying he was likely already out of the country. US Secretary of State John Kerry dubbed Snowden a traitor to his country and warned both Russia and China that their relations with the US might be damaged by their refusal to extradite him.

Snowden arrived in Moscow on Sunday from Hong Kong, from where he leaked to the media details of secret cyber-espionage programmes by both US and British intelligence agencies.

He was said by Russian officials to have spent the night in a distinctly unglamourous ‘capsule hotel’ at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport awaiting his onward connection.

He had been expected to take Aeroflot’s 1005 GMT flight Monday from Moscow to Havana after airline sources confirmed he had checked in and had a seat allocated. He and his accompanying party Sarah Harrison, a British national working on the legal team of the anti-secrecy group Wikileaks, had been checked in on flight SU 150 to Havana, according to an AFP correspondent who saw the flight roster.

But in a dramatic sequence of events, the flight left the terminal at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport with a pack of hopeful journalists on board and no sign of the former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor among the passengers. 

Just as the plane was taking off, the Interfax news agency quoted a Russian security source and an Aeroflot source saying that he was not on board the flight to Havana.

It quoted another source familiar with the matter as saying: ‘Snowden, most likely, has already left the Russian Federation. He could have left on a different plane.’ After the journalists learned Snowden was likely not on the plane, the doors had already been closed and there was no way out of a long 12-hour trip to Havana and back. 

Adding to the mystery, he has not once been seen in public in the Moscow airport since Sunday’s Aeroflot flight arrived from Hong Kong. Russian security sources said they had no reason to arrest Snowden, who officials described as an ordinary ‘transit passenger’ who had not crossed the border.