Snowden awarded Swedish ‘alternative Nobel’

Edward Snowden has been declared one of the winners of a Swedish human rights award for his disclosures of top secret government surveillance programmes.

The former National Security Agency contractor on Wednesday split the honorary portion of the 2014 Right Livelihood Award, also referred to as the “alternative Nobel” with Alan Rusbridger, editor of British newspaper The Guardian, which has published a series of articles based on documents leaked by Snowden.

The 1.5m kronor ($210,000) cash award was also shared by Pakistani human rights activist Asma Jahangir, Basil Fernando of the Asian Human Rights Commission and US environmentalist Bill McKibben.

via Snowden awarded Swedish ‘alternative Nobel’ – Europe – Al Jazeera English.