MOSCOW: A lawyer for US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden has denied reports that the fugitive had stayed at the Russian consulate in Hong Kong before his arrival in Moscow, according to an interview published yesterday.
“Edward told me that he never visited any diplomatic missions and that all this is inaccurate. He never had any talks with our diplomats while in Hong Kong,” Anatoly Kucherena told the Kommersant newspaper.
On Monday Kommersant, citing a source close to Snowden, said that he had spent several days at the Russian general consulate in Hong Kong before boarding an Aeroflot flight to Moscow in late June.
A Western source confirmed the information to the newspaper, adding that the West thought it was possible that Russian authorities had invited Snowden to come to Russia.
And a source in the Russian government confirmed to Kommersant that Snowden was at the Russian consulate in Hong Kong for two days until he left for Moscow, but said he had turned up uninvited.
In the interview published on Saturday, however, Snowden’s lawyer said that “he and his friends stayed at a hotel there... He understood he is being chased, so he moved often.”
Snowden ended up spending more than a month in the transit zone of Sheremetyevo airport in Moscow until Russia gave him asylum.
AFP
