Musk Asking Twitter Users Whether Snowden, Assange Should Be Pardoned

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - Twitter’s new owner, billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, has launched a new poll on the social media platform asking users whether WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden, should be pardoned.

"I am not expressing an opinion, but did promise to conduct this poll," Musk tweeted on Saturday, asking "Should Assange and Snowden be pardoned?"

Snowden leaked hundreds of thousands of classified documents in 2013. In addition to exposing the US domestic surveillance program, Snowden's documents also illustrated the size and scope of US spying on other nations, including routine eavesdropping on world leaders, as well as on US citizens.

Snowden fled the United States to Hong Kong and then to Russia, where he was granted asylum. Earlier this month, Snowden’s lawyer in Russia said that Snowden had received a Russian passport after Russian President Vladimir Putin granted him Russian citizenship at his request earlier this year.

Assange was apprehended in London in April 2019 on a US arrest warrant, facing extradition and a sentence of up to 175 years in a maximum security prison if convicted.

The 51-year-old Australian, wanted by the US government on charges of disclosing classified information and violating the Espionage Act, took refuge at the Ecuadorian Embassy from June 2012 until his arrest in April 2019, after which hearings began to extradite him to the United States.

Earlier this week, Assange reportedly applied to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) to challenge his extradition to the United States from the United Kingdom, where he is being held at a maximum security prison.