Ecuador receives asylum request from whistleblower Snowden

The Ecuadorian government has received an asylum request from Edward Snowden, the former US intelligence contractor who revealed infomation about the classified surveillance programs, Ecuador's Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino Aroca said.

Patino is on an official visit to Vietnam and put out the news on his Twitter account Sunday, Xinhua reported. He did not give details.

Meanwhile, an Aeroflot flight reportedly carrying Snowden, who is sought by the US, landed at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport Sunday evening.

Local media quoted an unnamed Aeroflot official as saying that Snowden was on Flight SU213. The report said Snowden intended to fly to Cuba Monday and then on to Caracas, Venezuela.

Though witnesses said they saw two cars from the Ecuadorian embassy in Russia parked outside the Sheremetyevo airport, one car later left with embassy staff.

Embassy employees refused to comment on whether they were going to pick up Snowden. An Ecuadorian newspaper later reported that Snowden was examined by an Ecuadorian embassy doctor.

A media report cited airport officials as saying that the whistleblower was not allowed to get out of the airport and had to stay in the terminal's transit zone until he boarded Flight SU150 to Havana, Cuba, since he has no Russian visa.

Snowden fled to Hong Kong May 20 after exposing two highly classified National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance programs, one collecting US phone records and the other mining internet data.