Brazil rejects Edward Snowden's asylum request in exchange for further NSA leaks

Brazil has reportedly rejected US fugitive Edward Snowden’s request for political asylum even as he offered to help investigate the alleged snoop-ops carried on the Brazilian soil.

A Brazilian government spokesman said that there has not been any official request made by Snowden yet and without a formal request, asylum will not be considered.

However, in his ‘Open letter to Brazilian people’, published by Brazilian newspaper Folha de S. Paulo, Snowden offered to collaborate with a Brazilian investigation into the NSA Internet surveillance program he revealed earlier this year, CBS News reports.

In the letter, Snowden said that he would like to assist in a congressional probe into NSA's programme, which monitored the personal communications of President Dilma Rousseff and other Brazilians. He further wrote that until a country grants him a permanent political asylum, the US government will continue to interfere with his ability to speak, but did not directly asked Brazil to consider his plea.

The NSA whistleblower is currently in Russia after being granted a temporary asylum, which is due to expire in August next year. Senator Ricardo Ferraço, chairman of the Senate foreign relations posted on Twitter that Brazil should not miss the opportunity to grant Snowden asylum, who had been key to unraveling the US espionage system.

Earlier NSA chief Gen. Keith Alexander said that Snowden must be treated as a criminal and rejected his proposal of amnesty. Snowden has been charged with espionage in the US for leaking the country’s global mass surveillance programmes that monitored people’s internet activities and collected phone records.