REYKJAVIK, Iceland – Yesterday evening June 26th, at approximately 3:00am Iceland time, an in-bound Russian Sukhoi Super Jet 100-95 chartered flight landed at Keflavik International Airport, after being held in a holding pattern for approximately 45 minutes while circling the airport.
Maybe it was just a “wind test”? We contacted local Iceland media who are claiming that aviation authorities are saying it was some sort of a test.
Or was this a privately chartered jet carrying a controversial and unannounced cargo, and waiting for clearance to land?
Interesting, so let’s take a look…
PHOTO: Our man in Iceland took this photo just after 3am last night when this Russian chartered flight landed Keflavik International.
21st Century Wire’s Man in Iceland tracked this flight on FlightRadar24.com last night, and followed-up by documenting the plane itself (above) after landing just after 3:00am Reykjavík local time early this morning. He explained:
“There’s an old military base with hangers there next to Keflavik International Airport, and the Russian plane was hiding there between two hangers. The tail number 97005 matches the flight I tracked coming in”.
“With all the other in-coming flights on FlightRadar24 you could click on the flight and it would reveal the origin of the flight – all except this one. It appeared to be removed, so some of this flight’s data was not being transmitted as with the others – maybe this is because it was a test flight? That’s still a possibility at this point”.
“I went to the arrivals terminal after this flight landed and did not see anyone coming through.”
Based on the information we have so far, this does not appear to be regularly schedule commercial flight, and the flight’s point of origin was concealed on tracking system Flight Radar24.
Is Snowden in Iceland already?
Speculation is still rife in the global media as to where Snowden is heading. The possibility that he will be camping out within the confines of the international transit compartment of the Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport for weeks, or months, without either being processed as an asylum seeker in Russia, or moved on to a friendly foreign destination – seems highly unlikely.
Add to this the fact that mainstream media crews with blank checkbooks have swarmed Moscow’s Airport this week and still have NO confirmation of a visual ID in Moscow either. Yesterday, the Telegraph confirmed this:
“The Daily Telegraph and other media scoured Sheremetyevo’s three southern terminals on Wednesday but airport staff, receptionists at a capsule hotel, policemen, Russian consular officials and passengers all claimed they had not seen the American.”
So no press have actually seen Ed Snowden in Moscow. It seems that this high-profile whistleblower’s public status is still being managed by Icelandic based organisation Wikileaks. It appears that Wikileaks is acting as a media liason of sort, giving press updates on Snowden alleged status in Moscow:
“It seemed likely the whistleblower was in a closed area of the airport and WikiLeaks, the organisation that has been supporting Mr Snowden, said he was safe and well.”
Could Wikileaks be running the PR smoke and mirrors cover for their cyber-hero Snowden, a potentially asset and golden goose for the organisation? Could all of the press flares be misdirection by Wikileaks in order to conceal his flight to Iceland?
Wikileaks have already let slip in public late last week on June 20th that chartered private jets were paid for and ready on standby to transport Snowden to Iceland. Then, only two days ago, Wikileaks appears to have thrown a screen over their private chartered jets claim as their spokesman Olafur Sigurvinsson did a U-turn by announcing that the jets ‘have been canceled:
“The three planes that were on standby in Hong Kong have been cancelled. There is nothing happening there. They were cancelled this morning,” Olafur Sigurvinsson, former chief operating officer at WikiLeaks partner firm DataCell, told AFP.”
There was also the loud media announcement that Snowden requested asylum status from the Ecuador government led by President Rafael Correa – which could very well be a distraction, this supported by the fact that Ecuador’s foreign minister announced yesterday it could take months to decide on Snowden’s asylum case, leaving him in limbo effectively, stuck in a Russian transit wing with an annulled and invalid US Passport.
21st Century Wire already indicated two days ago that Snowden’s Plan A has always been Iceland, so it’s possible that this mystery jet which has landed in Reykjavík early this morning, might have well have been ferrying the NSA whistleblower extraordinaire to his new Wiki-bunker in Iceland.
Above is a zoomed-in photo of the Sukhoi Super Jet, tail number 97005, on the tarmac this morning in Iceland, which matches the Flight Radar data in the screen shot below.
Below is the flight record of this Russian aircraft which arrived last night:
Still no reports from our man on the ground in Iceland about any visual ID on Ed Snowden himself, but we will keep looking.
But then again, still no visual ID of him in Moscow either. The world will wait and see where he turns up next.
