TEMPO.CO, La Paz - Evo Morales, President of Bolivia who suggested during a visit to Moscow that he might be happy to host Edward Snowden, had his plane rerouted on Tuesday under the suspicions that the Whistleblower was aboard.
France and Portugal did not rescind permission for President Evo Morales’s plane to traverse their airspace on the way back to Bolivia. The plane’s crew ended up landing in Vienna.
"They say it was due to technical issues, but after getting explanations from some authorities we found that there appeared to be some unfounded suspicions that Mr. Snowden was on the plane," the Bolivian foreign minister, David Choquehuanca, told reporters after the plane touched down in Vienna, where Mr. Morales was spending the night.
"We don’t know who invented this big lie," the foreign minister said at a news conference in La Paz, Bolivia. "We want to express our displeasure because this has put the president’s life at risk."
Rubén Saavedra, the defense minister, who was on the plane with President Morales, accused Obama administration of backing the action by France and Portugal, calling it 'an attitude of sabotage and a plot by the government of the United States'.
However, there was no immediate response by officials in Paris, Lisbon or Washington.
NYTIMES|JULI HANTORO
