Whistleblower Edward Snowden calls on Canada to help the refugee families who helped him

U.S. whistleblower Edward Snowden is urging the Canadian government to accept all seven of the people who sheltered him in Hong Kong while he was fleeing prosecution as refugees.

In a rare interview, he tells The National's Adrienne Arsenault that every day the individuals remain in Hong Kong, "they are in immediate danger." 

Two members of the group, Vanessa Rodel and her daughter seven-year-old Keana, arrived in Canada last week. The whole story reads a bit like a movie script. And why not? 

The reason Canadians know their story at all is because filmmaker Oliver Stone made a movie about Snowden, and along the way — at some point during the scripting process it's believed — information got out  that revealed how Rodel and Keana's lives — along with the rest of the group's — were intertwined with Snowden's.

Edward Snowden leaked classified NSA documents in 2013. The United States declared him a traitor and Snowden fled prosecution. (The Guardian/Associated Press)

Back in 2013, Snowden leaked classified documents from the U.S. National Security Agency, where he had been working as a contractor. The documents revealed a massive government surveillance operation, and the United States declared him a traitor. Snowden fled to avoid prosecution, at one point winding up in Hong Kong. 

That's where he met Rodel. 

She and two other families — refugees themselves having fled the Philippines and Sri Lanka — sheltered Snowden in their tiny homes in Hong Kong while he was on the run.

Now, from his apartment in Russia, where Edward Snowden lives in exile, he is pleading with Canada to let in the other families — the three adults and two children who were left behind.  

"These people helped me in 2013," Snowden told Arsenault by video chat. "And yet here we are 2019."