Snowden says officials want to kill him

Fugitive intelligence leaker Edward Snowden has voiced fears that US 'government officials want to kill me', in a TV interview to be broadcast in Germany.

The comment comes just days after Snowden's Russian lawyer Anatoly Kucherena said Snowden feared for his life, following a report by US website BuzzFeed of explicit threats against him from unnamed Pentagon and National Security Agency (NSA) officials.

Snowden also told the German broadcaster: 'These people, and they are government officials, have said they would love to put a bullet in my head or poison me when I come out of the supermarket, and then watch as I die in the shower.'

The translated Snowden quotes were released by German public television chain ARD, as part of a longer interview shot secretly in Moscow that it plans to screen later on Sunday.

In a BuzzFeed article posted online last week and entitled 'American Spies Want Edward Snowden Dead', a Pentagon official is quoted as saying: 'I would love to put a bullet in his head.'

'In a world where I would not be restricted from killing an American, I personally would go and kill him myself,' a current NSA analyst was further quoted as saying.

One unnamed army officer told BuzzFeed that Snowden could be 'poked' on his way home from buying groceries by a passerby who is actually a US agent.

Snowden 'thinks nothing of it at the time (and soon) starts to feel a little woozy,' the US intelligence officer is quoted as saying.

'And the next thing you know he dies in the shower.'

Snowden, a former NSA contractor, is wanted by US authorities on treason charges for disclosing details of a vast intelligence operation that monitored millions of phone calls and emails across the world.

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Snowden says officials want to kill him