Former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, on the run since leaking classified documents, was granted a one-year asylum in Russia and has left Moscow airport, where he was stranded for more than a month, his lawyer said Thursday.
Fugitive former US intelligence contractor Edward
Snowden left a Moscow airport on Thursday after Russia granted him
asylum for one year.
Snowden had spent more than a month in the transit area of Sheremetyevo Airport waiting for his application to be approved.
A lawyer for Snowden said he had left the airport for a secret location and was taking his security very seriously.
“I have just seen him off. He has left for a secure location
... Security is a very serious matter for him,” lawyer Anatoly Kucherena
told Russian state TV.
The United States is seeking Snowden’s extradition on
espionage charges for leaking the details of secret government
surveillance programmes to Britain’s “The Guardian” newspaper.
President Vladimir Putin has dismissed the US extradition
request and said that Snowden could receive asylum in Russia, but on the
condition that he stops leaking confidential US information.
Kucherena said Snowden had accepted Putin’s terms.
Snowden, 30, arrived in Moscow from Hong Kong on June 23.
Venezuela, Nicaragua and Bolivia have offered him asylum but the
logistics of seeking refuge in those countries has been complicated by
the fact that his US travel documents have been revoked.
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