Snowden and Pope Tipped for ‘Wide Open’ Nobel Peace Prize

File photo of Edward Snowden. (Agence France-Presse)

Mr Snowden, the former intelligence analyst who revealed the extent of US global eavesdropping, was one of the joint winners of the "alternative Nobel peace prize" last month. A hero to some and a traitor to others, he would be a highly controversial choice for the 878,000-euro ($1.11-million) award.

The Pakistani girls' education campaigner Malala Yousafzai, who was also a favourite last year, is also said to be in the running along with Pope Francis and a Japanese pacifist group.

Predicting the winner is even harder than usual this year, as the Nobel committee has received a record 278 candidates, so experts only have the names of those made public by their sponsors to go on.

Mr Snowden, a former National Security Agency (NSA) analyst, was proposed by two Norwegian members of parliament. Last month he shared the "alternative" $210,000 Norwegian Right Livelihood Award with The Guardian newspaper and human rights and environmental activists.

But from his exile in Russia, the US fugitive said during a recent press conference that "it is somewhat unlikely that the Nobel committee would back..." him winning the real Nobel.

However, other Russian-based individuals or groups could be a popular choice for the Nobel Committee.

For the Nobel committee president Thorbjoern Jagland, "sanctioning Moscow would be a way to prove that he acts independently, since (Jagland) is (also) the Secretary General of the Council of Europe, which counts Russia as a member," Mr Jacob told AFP.

Co-founded by Mikhail Gorbachev in 1993 with part of his peace prize money, the pro-democracy Moscow newspaper Novaya Gazeta has been tipped as a possible laureate. It is one of the few independent media outlets left in Russia and has seen several of its journalists murdered, including Anna Politkovskaya who exposed huge human rights abuses in Chechnya.

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Snowden and Pope Tipped for 'Wide Open' Nobel Peace Prize