A general view shows the headquarters of the Foreign Ministry of Russia in Moscow, yesterday.
MOSCOW: Vladimir Putin has for the first time floated the idea of the US whistleblower Edward Snowden remaining in Russia, hours after the fugitive applied for political asylum in the country.
Snowden applied for asylum at the consular office at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport at 10.30pm on Sunday through his WikiLeaks handler, Sarah Harrison, a consular official said.
Snowden broke his silence for the first time since he fled to Moscow to say he remains free to make new disclosures about US spying activity.
In a letter to Ecuador, he said the US was illegally persecuting him for revealing its electronic surveillance programme, PRISM.
Kim Shevchenko, a staff member at the airport’s consular department said: “The UK citizen Harrison passed on a request by Snowden to be granted political asylum.” He said he called the foreign ministry, who sent a courier one hour later to pick up the request.
He declined to say where Harrison or Snowden, who have not been seen since landing in Sheremtyevo last week, were staying. “She didn’t say and I didn’t ask,” he said.
In a move likely to enrage the US, Putin said yesterday: “If he wants to go somewhere and someone will take him, go ahead. If he wants to stay here, there is one condition — he must stop his work aimed at bringing harm to our American partners, as strange as that sounds coming from my mouth.”
Snowden has been trapped in Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport since June 23 after flying in from Hong Kong, from where he leaked top secret documents detailing NSA surveillance programmes.
Stripped of his US passport, he has been stuck in limbo since. His attempts to gain political asylum in Ecuador, whose London embassy is sheltering the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, appear to have dried up amid intense US lobbying and reported disagreements within the Ecuadorian government.
Snowden met Russian diplomats yesterday morning and handed them a list of 15 countries where he would like to apply for political asylum, the Los Angeles Times reported, citing a source in the foreign ministry. Putin appeared to leave himself some latitude, noting that Snowden would be unlikely to meet his conditions for staying in Russia. “Considering that he considers himself a human rights activist and a fighter for human rights, he probably doesn’t plan to stop this work, so he should choose a host country and head there,” Putin said. “When this will happen I, unfortunately, do not know.”
Putin, speaking at a press conference after a meeting of gas exporting countries, reiterated that Russia would not extradite Snowden to the US. “Russia never gives anyone up and doesn’t plan to give anyone up. And no one has ever given us anyone.”
For the second time Putin, unprompted, insisted that Snowden was not working with Russia’s secret services. “Mr Snowden is not our agent, never was and isn’t today. Our special services have never worked with him and are not working with him.”
Russia maintains one of the world’s most developed intelligence mechanisms and is widely believed to engage in snooping on its citizens.
In stark contrast to Russia’s approach to Snowden, whom Putin likened to the Soviet-era dissident Andrei Sakharov, Russian whistleblowers are often attacked — one, the anti-corruption activist Alexey Navalny, is on trial and another, the lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, died in prison. Several MPs said they would nominate Snowden for the Nobel Peace Prize. AGENCIES
