NATIONAL SECURITY - Traitor Snowden, Permission to Leave Moscow Airport

"Snowden’s lawyer says he will remain at Moscow airport for now" by Isabel Gorst, Washington Post 7/24/2013

Russia has decided to give fugitive leaker Edward Snowden permission to leave the Moscow airport where he has spent the last month, an immigration official said Wednesday, but it remains unclear whether he will be granted temporary political asylum.

Vladimir Volokh, the head of the public council of the Russian Federal Migration Service, said Snowden would be handed a certificate stating that he had applied for temporary political asylum.

State-controlled media, quoting unnamed security officials, said he was given the document sometime on Wednesday.

The certificate means that Snowden can leave the transit zone at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport, where he has been stranded — without permission or documentation to enter Russia or travel to another country — for more than a month.

Snowden, a former contractor for the National Security Agency who has been charged in the United States with leaking classified information, will not be free to move around Russia unless he is granted asylum, Volokh said.

“He will only be allowed to stay in places designated by Russian law enforcement agencies,” Volokh told the Eko Moskvy radio station on Wednesday afternoon.

He said Snowden would “not be extradited to any country where his life might be in danger, because he has applied for asylum here.”

Police stepped up security at the airport earlier Wednesday, fueling rumors that the Snowden’s release was imminent.  Russian television aired footage of Anatoly Kucherena, a lawyer for Snowden, arriving at Sheremetyevo in the afternoon to consult with his client.

Snowden asked the Russian government for temporary asylum last week.  He has indicated that he sees life in Russia as a short-term solution and hopes eventually to move on to Latin America.

Nicaragua, Bolivia and Venezuela have offered to give Snowden refuge, but pressure from Washington, as well as concern that the United States or Europe might block him from traveling across their airspace has prevented the fugitive from departing Russia.