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‘They told us Snowden was in the plane’: Spain

Spain on Friday tried to defuse a diplomatic row ignited when Bolivian President Evo Morales's plane was diverted because of suspicions that fugitive US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden was aboard.

'They told us Snowden was in the plane': Spain
The plane carrying Bolivian President Evo Morales lands at Las Palmas airport, on the Spanish Canary Island of Gran Canaria on July 3rd. Photo: Desiree Martin/AFP

"We have to try somehow to calm things down, relax the mood, and resume relations," Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia Margallo said in an interview with Spanish public broadcaster TVE.

Bolivia reacted furiously after Morales, flying home from Moscow on Tuesday, had to land in Vienna, accusing several European nations of denying his jet overfly rights.

Spain's foreign minister denied, however, that his country closed its airspace to the Bolivian leader's plane, which resumed its journey on Wednesday and refuelled in Las Palmas on the Spanish archipelago of the Canary Islands.

"What Spain said was that in no case was it going to restrict its airspace and that it would keep its authorization in force so the plane could land and refuel in Las Palmas," Margallo said.

Bolivia accused France, Portugal, Italy and Spain of denying flyover rights because they suspected the plane was carrying Snowden, who is seeking to avoid US espionage charges after leaking embarrassing details of a vast US phone and Internet surveillance programme.

"They told us he was in the plane," said Garcia Margallo during his RTVE interview on Friday.

Asked whether Spain had been contacted by US authorities, or whether they had made contact, the foreign minister said: "That remains secret."

"European countries reacted the way they did because the information they gave us was that he (Snowdon) was on board," he added.

"We evaluated the risk (that Snowden was on the plane) but once I have a written guarantee that he isn't, I believe in the word of an ally, which Bolivia is." 

The 30-year-old intelligence leaker is still believed to be holed up at a Moscow airport looking for a country that will give him safe haven.

Bolivia is one of 21 countries Snowden has asked for asylum. Morales said earlier this week that his country would be willing to study the request.

Spain had earlier said that Snowden could not apply for asylum in Spain because he was not on national soil. 

In related news, Bolivia's Latin American allies have also responded with outrage to the diversion of Morales' flight to Vienna.

Ecuador said  Spain had told its ambassador in Austria to board Morales’ plane in Vienna in bid to see if Snowden was on board, Spanish daily El País reported on Friday.

The newspaper also quoted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro as saying: “Who does that prime minister, Rajoy, think he is? He thinks South Americans are still his slaves?” 

Maduro also said he would reconsider his country’s relations with the “vile” ruling Popular Party government, but “not with the people of Spain", news agency EFE reported.

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ESPIONAGE

Europe demands answers after US-Danish spying claims

France warned Monday that alleged US spying on European allies using Danish underwater cables would be "extremely serious" if confirmed, as questions mounted over whether Denmark knew what the US was doing.

Europe demands answers after US-Danish spying claims
A file photo showing military area Kastellet in Copenhagen. Photo: Mads Claus Rasmussen/Ritzau Scanpix

In an investigative report on Sunday, Danish public broadcaster DR revealed together with several other European media outlets that the US National Security Agency (NSA) had eavesdropped on Danish underwater internet cables from 2012 to 2014 to spy on top politicians in Germany, Sweden, Norway and France.

The NSA was able to access text messages, telephone calls and internet traffic including searches, chats and messaging services — including those of Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel, then-foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and then-opposition leader Peer Steinbrück, DR said.

“It is extremely serious,” France’s Europe Minister Clement Beaune told France Info radio.

“We need to see if our partners in the EU, the Danes, have committed errors or faults in their cooperation with American services.”

He added it would also be very disturbing if Washington had been spying on EU leaders.

“Between allies, there must be trust, a minimal cooperation, so these potential facts are serious,” said the minister.

He said the facts must first “be verified” and then “conclusions drawn in terms of cooperation”.

Denmark’s neighbours Sweden and Norway have also demanded explanations from Copenhagen, though the tone has been more cautious.

And a German government spokesman said Monday that Berlin was “in contact with all relevant national and international interlocutors to get clarification”.

DR said the NSA had taken advantage of a surveillance collaboration with Denmark’s military intelligence unit FE to eavesdrop on the cables.

But it was unclear whether Denmark knew at the time that the US was using the cables to spy on Denmark’s neighbours.

Contacted by AFP, FE refused to comment on the revelations.

Defence Minister Trine Bramsen, who took over the defence portfolio in June 2019, has neither confirmed nor denied DR’s report, telling AFP only that “systematic eavesdropping of close allies is unacceptable”.

US eavesdropping on European leaders is, however, not new.

In 2013, former NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed thousands of classified documents exposing the vast US surveillance put in place after the September 11th, 2001 attacks.

Among other things, the documents showed the US government was spying on its own citizens and carrying out widespread tapping worldwide, including of Merkel’s mobile phone.

However, if the Danish-US spying is confirmed, it went on during and after the 2013 Snowden affair.

In 2014, following the Snowden scandal, a secret internal working group at FE began looking into whether the NSA had used a Danish-US spying collaboration — called XKeyscore — to spy on Denmark’s allies, DR said.

The group’s report, codenamed Operation Dunhammer, was presented to top FE management in May 2015.

What happened after that is not yet known.

Bramsen was however informed of the spying in August 2020, according to DR.

Shortly after that, FE director Lars Findsen, his predecessor who was in the post until 2015 Thomas Ahrenkiel, and three other FE employees were removed from their positions but no full explanation was made public.

At the time, the government said an audit had raised suspicions that FE was conducting illegal surveillance between 2014 and 2020.

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In November 2020, DR revealed that the US had used the Danish cables to spy on the Danish and European defence industries from 2012 to 2015.

Snowden, who now lives in Russia, called on Twitter for “full public disclosure” from Denmark and the US.

The latest revelations are “new pieces of the puzzle,” Thomas Wegener Friis, an intelligence expert and professor at the University of Southern Denmark, told AFP.

“It’s exactly the same kind of scandal as the one with German services helping the Americans to spy a few years ago,” he added.

Denmark is one of the United States’ closest European allies and sent troops to fight in Iraq.

It is the only Nordic country that is both a member of NATO and the EU.

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