UK government threatened the Guardian over Snowden

LONDON

The British government has threatened the Guardian newspaper, demanding that it either destroy or hand over leaked documents regarding former US National Security Agency (NSA) systems analyst Edward Snowden.

Guardian Editor-in-Chief Alan Rusbridger wrote in an article he penned on the newspaper's website that, after the newspapers published several documents leaked by Snowden, a British official visited him a month ago and told him, “You've had your fun. Now we want the stuff back.”

Revealing that two security officials from the British government's intelligence unit visited the Guardian's London office, Rusbridger said that the hard drives of the computers in the basement which contained the documents given to them by Snowden were destroyed under the surveillance of the officials.

Rusbridger indicated that the government demanded that the documents either be destroyed or handed over to them, otherwise legal action would be commenced against the newspaper.

-Against journalism-

Alan Rusbridger expressed that, before the computer hard drives were destroyed, he informed the British authorities that what they were doing was contrary to journalism. Rusbridger wrote in his article that they would “continue to do patient, painstaking reporting on the Snowden documents, we just won’t do it in London.”

The fact that Rusbridger penned the article after David Miranda, the partner of American journalist and Guardian writer Glenn Greenwald, was held in detention earlier in the day at Heathrow Airport for 9 hours drew attention. The computer, mobile phone and memory cards of Brazilian citizen Miranda were confiscated when he was detained.

In the statement which American journalist Greenwald, who had previously met with Snowden in Hong Kong, released after Miranda's detention at Heathrow airport, he claimed that he had in his possession important documents about the UK's espionage system and would publish them.

The Guardian's having announced that the British government threatened them and that they would continue to publish documents regarding Snowden from outside the UK have generated comments that the tension between the media and the government may increase in the country.

englishnews@aa.com.tr