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. Snowden had 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.
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. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said that Snowden was "healthy and safe" but refused to give further details about the whereabouts of the man responsible for one of the biggest security breaches in US history.
Snowden was said by Russian officials to have spent the night in a distinctly unglamorous "capsule hotel" at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport awaiting his onward connection. Accompanied by WikiLeaks activist Sarah Harrison, 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.
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. An AFP correspondent on board said that the seat he had been allocated - 17A - was glaringly empty.
Just as the plane was taking off, the Interfax news agency quoted a Russian security source and an Aeroflot source as saying that Snowden 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 and potentially fruitless 12-hour trip to Havana. 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.
There was no further confirmation from other sources that Snowden had left Russia and the ITAR-TASS news agency quoted an airport source claiming he was still in the transit zone. Snowden's leaks forced Obama's administration to defend US intelligence agencies' practice of gathering huge amounts of telephone and Internet data from private users around the world. Kerry said Monday it was "disappointing" that Snowden had been able to fly from Hong Kong to Russia, warning of consequences for ties with Moscow and Beijing.
"He is an indicted individual, indicted on three felony counts," Kerry said on a visit to New Delhi. "Evidently he places himself above the law having betrayed his country." Interfax quoted a source close to the matter as saying Russia is studying an extradition request it has received from the United States for Snowden. However, the source said Russia does not have the right to either "detain or deport" Snowden because he has not officially crossed the Russian border at Moscow's Sheremetyevo international airport.
Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino confirmed that the leftist Latin American country, whose embassy in London is already sheltering the wanted Assange, was considering Snowden's asylum request. Ecuador's outspoken leftist President Rafael Correa has championed the cause of Assange and his allies, to the fury of the United States.
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