"Fugitive Snowden in running for European rights prize"

"Fugitive U.S. intelligence analyst Edward Snowden is in the running for a European human rights prize whose past winners include Nelson Mandela and Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi."

Snowden, who is in hiding in Russia, is one of seven nominations made by members of the European Parliament for the Sakharov Prize for freedom of thought, a move likely to upset Washington which wants to try him on espionage charges.

Snowden was nominated by the Greens in the European Parliament who said he had done an "enormous service" for human rights and European citizens by disclosing secret U.S. Internet and telephone surveillance programs.

"Edward Snowden has risked his freedom to help us protect ours and he deserves to be honored for shedding light on the systematic infringements of civil liberties by U.S. and European secret services," Rebecca Harms and Dany Cohn-Bendit, the leaders of the left-leaning Greens, said in a statement.

Reuters