Thread: Snowden seeks temporary asylum in Russia

Snowden seeks temporary asylum in Russia

Anna Arutunyan and Doug Stanglin, USA TODAY 10:47 a.m. EDT July 12, 2013

NSA leaker Edward Snowden spoke at Moscow airport during a meeting with human rights groups.

Story Highlights
Snowden has been in Russia for weeks
He is thought to be seeking asylum in Latin America
The U.S. wants him extradited

MOSCOW — Edward Snowden, the alleged National Security Agency leaker, said Friday at a meeting with human rights groups that he is asking for temporary asylum in Russia while he attempts to win permanent political asylum in a Latin American country.

Snowden expressed his intentions during a meeting with representatives of 13 human rights groups.

According to Tatyana Lokshina of Human Rights Watch, Snowden seeks to stay in Russia because he "can't fly to Latin America yet," RT.com reports.

Snowden, who fled to Hong Kong after leaking information on NSA's worldwide surveillance and data-gathering networks, has applied for asylum in more than two dozen countries. Bolivia and Venezuelan have offered to accept him.

Lawmaker Vyacheslav Nikonov, chairman of the Russian state Duma also confirmed Snowden's intentions after he and a dozen other prominent officials and activists met with Snowden in the transit zone of Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport, where he has been marooned since June 23.

Also at the meeting were Sergei Nikitin, head of Amnesty International Russia, Vladimir Lukin, Russia's presidential human rights ombudsman, and attorney Genri Reznik.

Snowden said he is ready to ask Russia for political asylum and that he "does not intend to harm the U.S. in the future," according to Nikonov.

"No actions I take or plan are meant to harm the U.S. .. I want the U.S. to succeed," Snowden said, RT.comr reports.

Dmitry Peskov, the spokesman for Putin, told Russian news agencies after the announcement Friday that Russia has not received a new bid for asylum from Snowden and that Putin would continue to insist that Snowden stop leaking information.


Snowden says the government in Western Europe and North American are acting outside the law by preventing him from traveling and called on the rights activists to intervene with Putin on his behalf, Lokshina said.

The United States has revoked Snowden's passport.

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Snowden in a statement before the meeting thathe had invited the groups "for a brief statement and discussion regarding the next steps forward in my situation."

The emailed invitation from edsnowden@lavabit.com also states: "I have been extremely fortunate to enjoy and accept many offers of support and asylum from brave countries around the world. These nations have my gratitude, and I hope to travel to each of them to extend my personal thanks to their people and leaders."

In the Invitation Snowden claims that the U.S. government is trying to "deny my right to seek and enjoy this asylum under Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The scale of threatening behavior is without precedent."
moscow airport
Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport, where National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden is said to be staying in the airport's transit zone.(Photo: Sergei Grits, AP)


Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin, said that the Kremlin has not been invited to the meeting.

Snowden arrived in Russia on June 23 but has not been seen in public despite being believed to be in the airport's transit zone while bidding for asylum. Friday's developments therefore offer an opportunity to confirm that Snowden is still in Russia.

Snowden is thought to be seeking refuge in a Latin American country, with Venezuela the current front-runner even though President Nicolas Maduro has said that no formal application has been made.

The American Civil LIberties Union, meanwhile, issued a statement Thursday asserting that the former defense contractor "has serious claims for asylum and has a legitimate right to seek asylum irrespective of the human rights record of the country that he ultimately ends up in."

The statement charges that the USA has interfered with Snowden's right to seek asylum by revoking his passport and appears to have prevented him from receiving fair and impartial consideration of his application in many of the countries to which he has applied.

Jamil Dakwar, director of the ACLU human rights program, and Chandra Bhatnaqar, senior attorney for the progam, also warn that by infringing on Snowden's right to asylum, "U.S. actions also create the risk of providing cover for other countries to crack down on whistleblowers and deny asylum to individuals who have exposed illegal activity or human rights violations.

"That's a very dangerous precedent to set," the statement says.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/w...rport/2511207/

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Russian Officials Say They Have Received No Asylum Request From Leaker

By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN
Published: July 13, 2013

MOSCOW — Senior Kremlin officials said Saturday that Russia’s Federal Migration Service had not yet received a formal appeal for asylum from Edward J. Snowden. And the Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, insisted that the government had had no contact with him — a curious statement given the government’s clear role in arranging a meeting at Sheremetyevo Airport here in Moscow on Friday between Mr. Snowden and lawyers and human rights advocates.

Human rights officials at Sheremetyevo airport in Moscow after meeting with the intelligence contractor Edward J. Snowden.

At the meeting on Friday, Mr. Snowden, the former intelligence contractor who is on the run from American authorities and faces criminal charges of disclosing classified information, told the lawyers and rights advocates that he was requesting shelter in Russia because the United States and its allies were illegally preventing him from traveling to Latin America, where three countries have expressed a willingness to take him in.
The verbal maneuvering seems to signal that Russia’s political position vis-à-vis Mr. Snowden has been complicated further by his now publicly professed desire to stay here. Although President Vladimir V. Putin has insisted that Mr. Snowden must stop harming American interests, the Obama administration has made clear that it believes those interests are being harmed so long as Mr. Snowden is on the loose.
Mr. Snowden on Friday appealed to the human rights advocates to intervene on his behalf with the Russian government, though it is unclear how influential they can be, given that at least two of the groups represented — Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch — have had their Moscow offices raided by the authorities in recent months, and some of their local representatives have faced personal threats apparently aimed at curtailing their work.
“I ask for your assistance in requesting guarantees of safe passage from the relevant nations in securing my travel to Latin America, as well as requesting asylum in Russia until such time as these states accede to law and my legal travel is permitted,” Mr. Snowden said Friday in his remarks, according to a text released by WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy group that is helping him. “I will be submitting my request to Russia today, and hope it will be accepted favorably,” he said.
On Saturday, however, the director of Russia’s federal migration service, Konstantin Romodanovsky, told the Interfax news agency that no request had been received. “At the present time, there have been no applications from Snowden,” Mr. Romodanovsky said. “If we receive an application, it will be considered in due process of law.”
Mr. Lavrov, who was in Cholpon-Ata, Kyrgyzstan, for a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, told reporters, “To be granted political asylum, Russian law presumes a certain procedure, and the first step is the filing of an application with the Federal Migration Service.”
Mr. Lavrov added, “We have no contacts with Snowden,” and said the issues raised by Mr. Snowden during the meeting at the airport were “extensively covered by the media, and I learned about them just as anybody else.”
Since Mr. Snowden’s arrival in Moscow from Hong Kong on June 23, apparently with advance clearance from the Kremlin, Russian officials have engaged in an elaborate theatrical exercise, at times insisting that they are following all legal technicalities while simultaneously making clear that he is under official protection. There is nothing remotely normal about his situation — a purgatory in the airport transit zone with no clear end in sight.
Mr. Putin most recently had seemed to urge Mr. Snowden to stop releasing information about the classified American surveillance programs. “He must stop his work aimed at harming our American partners, as strange as that sounds coming from my lips,” he said — a condition that the presidential spokesman Dmitri S. Peskov reiterated on Friday and that Mr. Snowden appeared willing to accept.
But Mr. Putin had also indicated some desire to be rid of Mr. Snowden, calling him a free man and saying, “The sooner he chooses his final destination, the better it will be both for us and for him.”
Mr. Lavrov’s assertion that the government has not had contact with Mr. Snowden was notable given that numerous government agencies appeared to have a role in Friday’s meeting, including the Federal Customs Service and the airport administration.
Several of the participants in the meeting are also close to the Kremlin, including Russia’s human rights ombudsman, Vladimir Lukin, and Vyacheslav A. Nikonov, a member of the Duma, the lower house of Parliament.
People invited to attend the meeting received instructions from airport management, and reaching the transit zone required special passes to get through the customs control zone. At one point, a bus brought the lawyers and rights advocates from one part of the terminal to another, and several said they met Mr. Snowden in a room with a door marked “Staff Only.”
Mr. Snowden, in the meeting, said that the official offer of asylum that he had received from Venezuela should be regarded as giving him clear protection under international law and that he should be permitted to travel. He accused the United States and its allies of acting illegally in blocking him from traveling there.
The Russian government has itself shown little regard for the international asylum process when it has pursued fugitives abroad. In a case last fall, a political opposition leader wanted by the Russian authorities who fled to Kiev and requested asylum was kidnapped when he stepped outside of his lawyer’s office for lunch. He was put in a van by masked men and driven back to Moscow, where federal officials insisted he had surrendered.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/14/world/europe/edward-snowden-asylum.html?_r=0