Snowden reporter: Won’t be silenced by detention
Associated Press
RIO DE JANEIRO
An American journalist who has written stories based on documents leaked by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden said Monday he’ll publish with more fervor after British authorities detained his partner.
London police detained David Miranda, who is in a civil union with reporter Glenn Greenwald, under anti-terror legislation at Heathrow Airport in London on Sunday. Miranda arrived Monday in Rio de Janeiro, where he lives with Greenwald.
A defiant Greenwald, who reports for the Guardian newspaper in Britain, promised he was going “to write much more aggressively than before” about government snooping.
“I’m going to publish many more things about England, as well,” he said in Portuguese at Rio’s international airport when Miranda arrived. “I have many documents about England’s espionage system, and now my focus will be there, too. I think they’ll regret what they’ve done.”
In Washington, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the U.S. government was tipped off by British counterparts that Miranda would be detained, but that the U.S. had not requested the action.
The spokesman didn’t respond to a question about whether U.S. officials may have discouraged British officials from stopping Miranda.
The Brazilian government objected to Miranda’s detention, saying it wasn’t based on any real threat.
London’s Metropolitan Police defended the decision to detain Miranda, saying the examination was both “necessary and proportionate.”
The statement said an attorney had been offered to Miranda, but the Brazilian later told the Guardian in an interview that he refused to use the lawyer out of fear of the British government.
Miranda told the Guardian that agents questioning him “were threatening me all the time and saying I would be put in jail if I didn’t cooperate.”
Miranda said he was seized almost as soon as his plane landed at Heathrow. Agents confiscated Miranda’s computer, Wi-Fi watch, cellphone, DVDs, memory sticks and some paper documents.
In London, a British lawmaker called for police to explain why Miranda was detained and why it took nearly nine hours to question him.