French Justice Minister Christiane
Taubira thinks National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden and
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange might be allowed to settle in France.
If France decides to offer them asylum
she would “absolutely not be surprised,” she told French
news channel BFMTV on Thursday (translated from the French). She said it
would be a “symbolic gesture.”
Taubira was asked about the NSA’s
sweeping surveillance of three French presidents, disclosed by Wikileaks this
week, and called it an “unspeakable practice.”
Her comments echoed those in an editorial in
France’s leftist newspaperLibération Thursday morning, which said
giving Snowden asylum would be a “single gesture” that would send “a clear and
useful message to Washington,” in response to the “contempt” the U.S. showed by
spying on France’s president.
Snowden, who faces criminal espionage charges
in the U.S., has found himself stranded in Moscow with temporary asylum as he
awaits responses from two dozen countries where he’d like to live; and Assange
is trapped inside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London to avoid extradition to
Sweden on rape charges.
Taubira, the chief of France’s
Ministry of Justice, holds the equivalent position of the attorney general in
the United States. She has beendescribed in
the press as a “maverick,” targeting issues such as poverty and same-sex
marriage, often inspiring anger among French right-wingers.
Taubira doesn’t actually have the
power to offer asylum herself, however. She said in the interview that such a
decision would be up to the French president, prime minister and foreign
minister. And Taubira just last weekthreatened to
quit her job unless French President Francois Hollande implemented her juvenile
justice reforms.
(This post is from our
blog: Unofficial Sources.)
Photo: Miguel
Medina/AFP/Getty Images
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