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Snowden to tell European parliament truth about bugging

Edward Snowden agreed to give testimony to the European Parliament in December in the affair over total bugging of Europeans

MOSCOW, December 11. /ITAR-TASS/. Former contractor of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Edward Snowden agreed to give testimony to the European Parliament in December in the affair over total bugging of Europeans that the US National Security Agency (NSA) had organized, member of the European Parliament Committee for Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs from Germany Jan Philipp Albrecht (Germany’s Group of Greens/European Free Alliance) told Izvestia daily. European lawmakers are expected to receive answers to the questions they are interested in on December 18.

In his words, the European parliamentary committee is preparing questions to the CIA ex-contractor, who escapes US justice in Moscow. Most important that the deputies are interested in is the role of European security services in the collecting and handover of the NSA data. Only the lawmakers from Britain, which is a US traditional ally, refused to participate in the questioning of the witness, though the British security services are known to do a close joint work with the US counterparts.

Snowden received the list of questions in advance. He will answer them in the written form. The European Parliament will broadcast a video record of his testimony, which he will give, reading the answers in the written form.

Snowden can cooperate with foreign detectives, but not leaving the territory of Russia, because this step threatens him to lose the status of political refugee, Snowden’s lawyer Anatoly Kucherena said. Meanwhile, the CIA former analyst does not intend to disclose the classified information about the activity of the US security services that would be detrimental to the United States. This is the condition that Russian President Vladimir Putin had put forward to Snowden.

The world community learnt from Snowden’s revelations that the NSA surveys about two million French and 15 million German phone calls daily, Izvestia daily recalled. The headquarters of the European Council in Brussels, the EU diplomatic mission and the embassies of several European countries in the US were being bugged. The embassies of France, Greece and Italy are among them. The German government obtained the information that the US security services had even controlled the mobile phone of German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Itar-Tass is not responsible for the material quoted in these press reviews

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