Whistleblower Edward Snowden says the US government is hacking Chinese mobile phone companies.
THE US spy wanted by Washington, Edward Snowden, did not emerge Sunday with other passengers in the terminal after he landed in Moscow on a flight from Hong Kong.
Some fellow travellers said he may have been whisked away direct from the airport tarmac.
Snowden was not among the passengers on the Aeroflot flight who emerged into the public area of Terminal F at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport after the flight from Hong Kong arrived Sunday, an AFP correspondent reported.
But some passengers told AFP they saw a car parked next to the plane after it taxied to the terminal building, leaving the possibility he may have been taken away separately from the other passengers.
"They were getting luggage straight from the plane into the car. It seemed a little strange. I saw three pieces of luggage," Aeroflot passenger Jason Stephens from the United States told AFP.
AFP correspondents also said they saw a diplomatic car at VIP arrivals with an Ecuadorean flag. It was accompanied by an SUV, also apparently from the embassy.
Snowden's final travel plans have not been confirmed but a source within Aeroflot told Russian media he planned to head to Venezuela via Havana on Monday.
Rossiya 24 state rolling news channel speculated the ex operative could be spending the night at one of the South American embassies in Moscow.
In a post on its Twitter feed, WikiLeaks said Snowden was "accompanied by WikiLeaks legal advisers" on his flight from Hong Kong, which had refused to act on a US arrest warrant for the former contractor.
A TV screen in Hong Kong shows a news report of Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor believed to be hiding in the city. Kin Cheung/AP Photo
A source working for Aeroflot was quoted by Russian media as saying Snowden was flying together with Sarah Harrison - a WikiLeaks employee.
Anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks says Snowden is bound for an unnamed "democratic nation via a safe route for the purpose of asylum," and that he is being escorted by diplomats and legal advisors from WikiLeaks.
WikiLeaks said in its statement Sunday that Snowden requested the group "use its legal expertise and experience to secure his safety."
Hong Kong's government confirmed earlier that Snowden has left the territory, where he had been hiding for several weeks since he revealed information on highly classified spy programs.
"Snowden today voluntarily left Hong Kong for a third country through legal and normal means,'' a Hong Kong government spokesman said in a press statement.
The statement added that Hong Kong had "not obtained adequate information'' to handle a provisional arrest warrant for Snowden issued by the United States.
The US Justice Department said Sunday that it will seek the cooperation of law enforcement authorities in countries where former NSA computer technician Edward Snowden may travel.
"We will continue to discuss this matter with Hong Kong and pursue relevant law enforcement cooperation with other countries where Mr Snowden may be attempting to travel," Chitre said.
Snowden told the South China Morning Post in one of his interviews that the US government was hacking Chinese mobile phone companies to gather data from millions of text messages.
US spies have also hacked China's prestigious Tsinghua University in Beijing and Asia Pacific fibre-optic network operator Pacnet, the Post quoted Snowden as saying.
Snowden, who worked as a contractor for the National Security Agency (NSA), has been charged with espionage by the US after revealing a massive spying programme and has gone to ground after fleeing to Hong Kong.
"The NSA does all kinds of things like hack Chinese cell phone companies to steal all of your SMS data," Snowden said in the interview conducted on June 12.
Government data shows almost 900 billion text messages were exchanged in China in 2012.
The claims followed soon after a report in the Guardian in which he claimed the British government's electronic eavesdropping agency had gained secret access to fibre-optic cables carrying global internet traffic and telephone calls.
Britain's Guardian said that Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) had started processing vast amounts of personal information - including Facebook posts, emails, internet histories and phonecalls - and is sharing it with the NSA.
The Post has previously quoted Snowden saying there have been more than 61,000 NSA hacking operations globally, targeting powerful "network backbones" that can yield access to hundreds of thousands of individual computers.
He said these included hundreds of targets in mainland China and Hong Kong.
Snowden told the Post in the report published on Saturday that Tsinghua University, which counts China's President Xi Jinping and previous President Hu Jintao among its graduates, was the target of extensive hacking by the US.
The university, which is home to the mainland's six major backbone networks from where internet data from millions of Chinese citizens can be gathered, was breached as recently as January, he said.
In 2009, the NSA also attacked Pacnet, the owner of one of the region's biggest fibre-optic networks, the Post reported, citing information provided by Snowden.
Pacnet, which is headquartered in Hong Kong and Singapore, owns 46,000 kilometres of fibre and operates in 13 countries, according to its website.
A US justice department official has confirmed that a sealed criminal complaint has been lodged with a federal court in Virginia and a provisional arrest warrant has been issued for Snowden, who fled to Hong Kong in May.
But Hong Kong government officials Saturday remained tight-lipped as to whether they had received such a request and whether Snowden had been approached.
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