NSA leaksRussia grants Snowden a 1-year temporary refugee status (updated)
Edward Snowden has left Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport and has entered Russia after he had been granted temporary asylum – the official language: a temporary refugee status — for one year. U.S. lawmakers said Russia’s decision had damaged U.S.-Russian relations. “Russia has stabbed us in the back,” said Senator Charles Schumer (D-New York). “Each day that Mr. Snowden is allowed to roam free is another twist of the knife.” The White House said the United States was “extremely disappointed that the Russian government would take this step,” a step which “undermines a long-standing record of law enforcement cooperation.
Edward Snowden receives temporary refugee status from Russia // Source: albedaiah.com
Anatoly Kucherena, lawyer for Edward Snowden, said his client has left Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport and has entered Russia.
Kucherena said Snowden had been granted temporary asylum – the official language: a temporary refugee status — for one year.
The temporary refugee status allows Snowden to move freely within the country and is valid for one year, Kucherena told the New York Times.
The Guardian reports that it is not yet known whether Snowden’s plans to stay in Russia permanently,
as Kucherena recently suggested, or whether he will try to move on to one of the four Latin American countries — Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Ecuador – which last month had offered him asylum.
Kucherena said: “We have won the battle — now the war.”
He refused to offer details about where Snowden is, or where he plans to stay while in Russia: “He is the most wanted man on planet earth. What do you think he is going to do? He has to think about his personal security. I cannot tell you where he is going,” he said.
The reaction in the United States signaled a rocky road ahead for U.S.-Russia relations. Senator Robert Menendez (D-New Jersey), chair of the Senate Foreign Relations committee, said Snowden was a “fugitive who belongs in a United States courtroom.”
“Edward Snowden will potentially do great damage to U.S. national security interests, and the information he is leaking could aid terrorists and others around the world who want to do real harm to our country,” Menendez said. “Russia must return Snowden to face trial at home.”
Menendez added that the episode had damaged U.S.-Russian relations.
Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) tweeted to point out the contradiction between Snowden’s ideals of free and open society and the practices of the Russian government.
McCain, one of the Senate’s leading critics of Moscow, slammed the asylum decision as “a slap in the face of all Americans” and called on the administration to turn up the pressure on Moscow on a variety of fronts, including a renewed push for NATO expansion and new missile-defense programs in Europe.
“Now is the time to fundamentally rethink our relationship with Putin’s Russia,” McCain said in a statement released by his office. “We need to deal with the Russia that is, not the Russia we might wish for. We cannot allow today’s action by Putin to stand without serious repercussions.”
“Russia has stabbed us in the back,” said Senator Charles Schumer (D-New York). “Each day
