14 DAY TRIAL // With his temporary asylum period coming to an end, Edward Snowden has decided to ask the Russians to extend his stay for another year.
According to his lawyer, Snowden’s current term of stay in Russia expires on July 31, the day he was issued the paperwork last year.
“The procedure is very simple if a citizen of any country would like to stay and live in Russia. In this case, we are talking about Snowden, so we have fulfilled the procedure to receive temporary asylum,” Anatoly Kucherena has said earlier today after submitting the necessary documentation.
According to asylum laws, anyone can ask for their temporary asylum to be extended. Chances are pretty big for the Federal Migration Service to approve the request because the situation Snowden is in has not changed in the past year, meaning that the United States continues to accuse him of the same things it did last year, and there’s very little indication that he’d go through a fair trial.
Furthermore, Snowden has said that he wouldn’t qualify for whistleblower protection since he was a federal government worker in the intelligence community, which is not covered by the same laws.
Kucherena hasn’t discuss another topic that even Snowden addressed on several occasions, namely the possibility of applying for Russian citizenship. Instead, the lawyer has gone back to say that the Federal Migration Service will be the one to make the call, indicating that asylum is the first option on the list.
It’s never been a secret that Edward Snowden would rather be an asylee somewhere else. His words have been interpreted a lot over the past year, as people believed he was asking for protection from countries like Brazil and Germany.
However, just like last year, the biggest problem is that Snowden is not in any of these countries, and while some governments may be willing to consider such a possibility, he still needs to be there personally. It is interesting, however, why he didn’t choose to go to an embassy in Russia and demand asylum there, but he might just end up in the same situation as Julian Assange – impossible to leave the building – if he did.
While Snowden said he never intended to end up in Russia, since he was only there for a layover flight to South America, it seems that he’s made the most of it. A former Russian intelligence agent has suggested, however, that it wasn’t a mistake that he did end up in the Moscow airport, and that the whole thing was orchestrated by the Russian government, but there’s been no evidence to this beyond his statement.