WASHINGTON — Edward Snowden, who leaked secret information about U.S. spying programs, has been granted an extension to stay in Russia for three more years, his attorney said in a televised press conference in Moscow Thursday.
Snowden recently formally requested that Russia’s government extend his temporary asylum, and Snowden attorney Anatoly Kucherena said the request had been accepted.
“As of August 1, 2014, Snowden has received residency for three years,” Kucherena told reporters Thursday.
Snowden’s temporary asylum in Russia ended on July 31. He’d been holed up at a Moscow airport for five weeks before the Russian government granted asylum for one year on August 1, 2013.
Snowden has kept busy working for a Russian website and speaking out on the disclosures about the U.S. government’s spying programs and processes that he helped make public.
Snowden’s disclosures in 2013 made him an icon among those who praised him for risking his future to expose these secrets and a villain among those who accused him of being a lawbreaker who betrayed the United States.
The former government information technology contractor collected information on spy programs — in which the NSA mined phone and Internet metadata from thousands of people inside and outside of the United States — and exposed the programs to the media.
U.S. authorities have charged him with espionage and theft of government property.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton commented on Snowden’s case in an interview this week with the German magazine Der Spiegel.
“I think he is a poor messenger for the message that he’s trying to take credit for,” she told the magazine.
“I think he could have provoked the debate in our country without stealing and distributing material that was government property and was of some consequence,” Clinton said.
