Edward Snowden begins life in secret Russian location
Fugitive American whistleblower Edward Snowden has arrived at a secret location where he will stay as he begins a new life in Russia, his lawyer confirmed.
Edward Snowden in Moscow Airport after being granted asylum Photo: Life News, Russia
By Tom Parfitt
1:59PM BST 02 Aug 2013
The announcement came as a Moscow website published photographs of the smiling 30-year-old leaving the city's Sheremetyevo airport and formally entering the country on Thursday together with Sarah Harrison, his British legal adviser from WikiLeaks.
The whistleblower, wanted on espionage charges in the United States for disclosing top secret and controversial state surveillance programmes, looked relaxed in the images as he strolled down a concourse holding luggage and wearing a black rucksack.
Mr Snowden was granted temporary asylum for one year in Russia on Thursday, in a move that angered the US White House, which said it was "very disappointed".
Russian lawyer Anatoly Kucherena shows Snowden's new temporary document. Mr Snowden has received asylum in Russia for one year and left the transit zone of Moscow airport, his lawyer said on Thursday.
His once cropped hair appeared to have grown long during his five-and-a-half week confinement in the transit zone of the airport, where he arrived from Hong Kong after fleeing the United States.
His lawyer, Anatoly Kucherena, who was beside him in the photographs, said on Friday: "Yes, the question of housing is resolved, everything is in order." Mr Kucherena earlier said that Mr Snowden had "acquired friends in Russia, American friends, who can ensure his security for some time".
The location of his temporary whereabouts would not be revealed because he is "one of the most wanted people on Earth", the lawyer added.
Mr Snowden's new status gives him the right to work and live wherever he likes in Russia, and he is expected to actively seek a job because he is running out of money.
Last month he said he would be in Russia temporarily while he sought a way to reach South America, where Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua have offered him political asylum. However, Mr Kucherena said his client would be building a new life in Russia and had no plans to leave soon.
Russia's provision of Mr Snowden is expected to lead to a fresh diplomatic downturn with Washington.
White House officials have hinted that Barack Obama may not visit Moscow to see Vladimir Putin for a planned one-on-one meeting when the US president travels to Russia for a G20 summit in St Petersburg next month.
Alexei Pushkov, a senior pro-Kremlin Russian MP, told the Kommersant newspaper on Friday: "The Americans created the crisis themselves. Despite Obama's statement that he's not going to force down an aeroplane because of some kind of 29-year-old hacker they have blocked Snowden's path and removed the possibility for him to fly out safely, having held up the Bolivian president's plane. Now Snowden might stay in Russia forever."
Mr Putin's spokesman, however, claimed this week that the whistle-blower's fate was not high on the Russian president's agenda.
