Defiant Russia Grants Snowden Year’s Asylum

[WestVirginiaRebel]

NY Times:

MOSCOW — Brushing aside pleas and warnings from President Obama and other senior Americans, Russia granted Edward J. Snowden temporary asylum and allowed him to walk free out of a Moscow airport transit zone on Thursday despite the risk of a breach in relations with the United States.

 

Russia’s decision, which infuriated American officials, ended five weeks of legal limbo for Mr. Snowden, the former intelligence analyst wanted by the United States for leaking details of the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs, and opened a new phase of his legal and political odyssey.

 

Even as his leaks continued with new disclosures from the computer files he downloaded, Mr. Snowden now has legal permission to live — and conceivably even work — anywhere here for as long as a year, safely out of the reach of American prosecutors. Though some supporters expect him to seek permanent sanctuary elsewhere, possibly in Latin America, Mr. Snowden now has an international platform to continue defending his actions as a whistle-blower exposing wrongdoing by the American government.

 

In a statement issued by WikiLeaks, the antisecrecy organization that has been assisting him since he made his disclosures in June, Mr. Snowden thanked Russia for giving him permission to enter the country “in accordance with its laws and international obligations.” He accused the Obama administration of disregarding domestic and international law since his disclosures, but added that “in the end, the law is winning.”

 

White House officials indicated that Mr. Obama was leaning against his plan to meet President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in Moscow next month after the summit meeting of the Group of 20 nations in St. Petersburg, though officials stopped short of canceling the meeting outright. While American and Russian officials acknowledge the need to work together on issues of global importance, like the reduction of nuclear weapons and the war in Syria, Mr. Snowden’s case now casts a shadow over relations in the way little has since the days of cold war defections.

 

“We are extremely disappointed that the Russian Federation would take this step,” the White House press secretary, Jay Carney, said in Washington. He pointedly added that the administration was evaluating “the utility of having a summit.”

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Snowden stays.

[Valin]