The Sakharov Prize, Europe’s top human rights award, has listed the nominees for the 2013 prize of $65,000, and they include NSA leaker Edward Snowden; Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani schoolgirl who was the victim of an assassination attempt by the Taliban; and the European Parliament.
Malala, 16, is considered the most likely winner because she was nominated by three caucuses; she survived the hit by Islamist gunmen that occurred as she walked home from school. Snowden was nominated by the pro-environment Greens organization.
Other nominees include the Standing Man group, Turkish activists protesting the brutality of Turkish government police; jailed Ethiopian journalists Reeyot Alemu and Eskinder Nega; Ales Belyatsky, Eduard Lobau and Mykola Statkevich, who are political prisoners in Belarus; Vladamir Putin foe Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who languishes in jail; and the CNN Freedom Project, which attempts to raise awareness on human trafficking.