14 DAY TRIAL // Edward Snowden doesn’t have to worry about his immediate future anymore after the Russian authorities decided to grant him a three-year residence permit in Russia, starting August 1.
Snowden’s lawyer said that the residence permit was granted to Snowden with the August 1 date on it, basically extending his one-year temporary asylum received in 2013.
As his asylum period was coming to an end, Snowden applied for an extended stay in Russia since no other country offered him protection.
Everyone assumed that Snowden applied for an extension of this asylum, which he would have most certainly been granted because his situation hadn’t changed that much in the past year. According to asylum rules, an individual can only apply for an extension to a temporary asylum if his or her situation hasn’t changed compared to the time the protection was offered originally.
That being said, Snowden continues to be hunted by the American authorities, who want to bring him in for a trial that the NSA whistleblower isn’t too sure would be fair, especially since he wouldn’t be granted whistleblower protection because he was only a contractor with the NSA, not an actual person hired by the intelligence agency.
In the past year, Snowden has kept a low profile, working from his home in an undisclosed location.
Even so, Edward Snowden’s lawyer says that the whistleblower is now freer than he was until August 1. This is because the man behind the biggest NSA leak in history didn’t ask for a political asylum, but rather for a residence permit.
“He will be able to travel freely within the country and go abroad. He’ll be able to stay abroad for no longer than three months,” said Anatoly Kucherena, Snowden’s lawyer.
The whistleblower will not, for now, apply for Russian citizenship, mainly because the law does not permit him to do so. “A foreign citizen, who got a residence permit, will certainly be able to apply for citizenship,” Kucherena said, although he mentioned that he would only be allowed to do so in five years.
It is interesting that Snowden now has the freedom to leave Russia, which wasn’t possible before. However, there are pretty high chances that he’d be arrested upon setting foot outside the country’s borders, especially if he does so in a country that is an ally of the United States.
The move does open up Snowden’s possibilities of flying out to one of the countries he originally hoped to reach in South America.