The case of NSA leaker Edward Snowden was one that neither Hong Kong nor Beijing wanted to get involved in. With a stalling maneuver, Hong Kong let Mr. Snowden flee US extradition.
A giant screen at a Hong Kong shopping mall shows Edward Snowden, the former contractor accused of leaking information about NSA surveillance programs. He left Hong Kong on Sunday.
Vincent Yu/AP
EnlargeBy allowing Edward Snowden to leave Hong Kong Sunday, hours after the United States sought to extradite him, the government there has rid itself ? and Beijing ? of an awkward diplomatic and legal problem.
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Peter Ford is The Christian Science Monitor?s Beijing Bureau Chief. He covers news and features throughout China and also makes reporting trips to Japan and the Korean peninsula.
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Indeed there are strong suspicions in the former British colony that the Hong Kong authorities deliberately gave the fugitive NSA whistleblower time to get out.
The US extradition request, filed on Saturday, ?did not fully comply with the legal requirements under Hong Kong law,? the Hong Kong government said on Sunday, so it had asked Washington for ?additional information.?
In the meantime, there was ?no legal basis to restrict Mr. Snowden from leaving Hong Kong,? the statement added. On Sunday morning, Snowden boarded a plane bound for Moscow, accompanied by legal advisors from the anti-secrecy group Wikileaks according to a post on the group?s Twitter account.
His final destination was unclear.
?I suspect it was ?wink, wink, nudge, nudge, you?ve got 48 hours to get out of Dodge City?,? says Kevin Egan, a Hong Kong lawyer with experience of extradition cases. ?When the government got the clarification it had sought, it might not have been able to let him go.?
?Snowden managed to get away because Hong Kong decided to stall,? adds Claudia Mo, a lawmaker with the pro-democracy Civic Party. ?The matter was too tricky for Sino-American relations ? so Beijing gave instructions he should be given time to leave.?
Snowden had said he planned to challenge any US extradition attempt in Hong Kong courts, declaring his faith in the city?s rule of law. But he faced the possibility of having to stay in jail throughout the court proceedings, which could have taken several years according to local lawyers.
His case was a thorny one for Beijing, anxious to improve relations with the United States and embarrassed by the US fugitive?s presence in Hong Kong, but unable to intervene openly in Hong Kong?s judicial process under the ?one country, two systems? principle that safeguards Hong Kong?s courts.
Hong Kong?s top official, Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying had promised that the case would be handled ?in accordance with the laws and established procedures of Hong Kong.? But the politically sensitive case ?would have been quite a test for our rule of law,? says Ms. Mo. ?It would have been a very thorny issue and it is all for the best for both Hong Kong and Beijing that he has gone.?
?This was not a case that Hong Kong or Beijing ever wanted to get involved in,? agrees Mr. Egan. ?The best thing for both of them was for Snowden to leave.??
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Public release date: 26-Jun-2013
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Even though it’s still nascent, Sub-Saharan Africa continues to grow pools of capital and entrepreneurial know-how in hubs like Nairobi, Kenya. Today, the Nairobi-based Savannah Fund, which is raising up to $10 million for startups in the region, just graduated its first batch of companies at PivotEast, a Disrupt-like competition for African mobile startups. They include a Ghanaian e-commerce startup that sells electronics called Ahonya, a Ugandan mobile game developer called Kola Studios that’s popularized a local card game and SafariDesk, a site that helps travelers find off-the-beat experiences and places for luxury camping. Mbwana Alliy, who returned to East Africa after business school at Stanford University, said he picked these companies out of about 170 applicants across the continent. He then puts them through a three-month accelerator in Nairobi, Kenya, where he’s arranged sessions with mentors like Aardvark’s Max Ventilla or other Silicon Valley-based or foreign entrepreneurs who come through the region. They take about a 15 percent equity stake for about $25,000, which does sound steep. But Alliy says he’s seen a fair amount of deals where other angels might have taken 40 percent of a company for as little as $10,000. The reality is, with a much lower per capita GDP, the economics of founding a company in Kenya or Nigeria are very different than they are in the Valley. Alliy says the whole process of setting up the fund, for which he’s still raising funding, has been a big learning experience. When he announced the fund last year, he set it up with i/o Ventures managing director Paul Bragiel and Erik Hersman, who co-founded Ushahidi, a mobile platform that’s been used to crowdsource information during disasters and elections. “When I started, people asked me, ‘Mbwana, are you going to copy and paste i/o onto Africa?’ And I was well aware that it couldn’t be like that.” Certain things have gone well. “The biggest thing I was surprised by was that we put together quite a few solid mentor sessions over the past three to four months,” he said, noting that big names in tech like Eric Schmidt have passed through Nairobi on visits to the local iHub. “A lot of global talent shows up here.” Schmidt’s Tomorrow Ventures followed on with an early Savannah investment in biNu, a platform that optimizes app use on basic feature phones. He’s also taken initial funding from angels like Yelp’s