Althingi halted NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden’s bid for Icelandic citizenship before parliamentarians broke for their summer holidays, NBCNews.com reports.
A proposal was put forth by 6 MP’s on Thursday for Iceland to grant citizenship to Snowden to help him avoid espionage charges in his native United States. WikiLeaks had applied for asylum in Iceland on Snowden’s behalf last week. However a majority voted against allowing the proposal to be added to the agenda.
“Snowden has formally requested citizenship. But nothing is now going to happen. We could not even vote on it,” Pirate Party MP Birgitta Jónsdóttir said to Reuters.
Snowden fled to Hong Kong prior to leaking information on the NSA spying on US citizens. He has since traveled to Russia and is rumoured to be living in the transit area of Moscow’s international airport after being made essentially stateless following the revocation of his passport.
Buy subscriptions, t-shirts and more from our shop right here!
