Reuters reports: A former U.S. security contractor charged by Washington with espionage was allowed to leave Hong Kong on Sunday, his final destination not confirmed, because a U.S. request to have him arrested did not comply with the law, the Hong Kong government said.

Edward Snowden, who worked for the National Security Agency, had been hiding in Hong Kong since leaking details about U.S. surveillance activities to news media.

The United States wanted him to be extradited to face trial and is likely to be furious about reports that he was travelling to Moscow on Sunday before flying on to Cuba and Venezuela.

“It’s a shocker,” said Simon Young, a law professor with Hong Kong University. “I thought he was going to stay and fight it out. The U.S. government will be irate.”

A source at Russia’s Aeroflot airline said Snowden would fly from Moscow to Cuba on Monday and then planned to go on to Venezuela. The South China Morning Post earlier said his final destination might be Ecuador or Iceland.

The WikiLeaks anti-secrecy website said it helped Snowden find “political asylum in a democratic country”.

It added in an update on Twitter that he was accompanied by diplomats and legal advisers and was travelling via a safe route for the purposes of seeking asylum.

“The WikiLeaks legal team and I are interested in preserving Mr Snowden’s rights and protecting him as a person,” former Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon, legal director of WikiLeaks and lawyer for the group’s founder Julian Assange, said in a statement. [Continue reading…]

Updates following Snowden’s arrival in Moscow.