Former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, on the run since leaking classified documents, was granted a one-year asylum in Russia and has left Moscow airport, where he was stranded for more than a month, his lawyer said Thursday.
Snowden had spent more than a month in the transit area of Sheremetyevo Airport waiting for his application to be approved.
A lawyer for Snowden said he had left the airport for a secret location and was taking his security very seriously.
“I have just seen him off. He has left for a secure location … Security is a very serious matter for him,” lawyer Anatoly Kucherena told Russian state TV.
The United States is seeking Snowden’s extradition on espionage charges for leaking the details of secret government surveillance programmes to Britain’s “The Guardian” newspaper.
President Vladimir Putin has dismissed the US extradition request and said that Snowden could receive asylum in Russia, but on the condition that he stops leaking confidential US information.
Kucherena said Snowden had accepted Putin’s terms.
Snowden, 30, arrived in Moscow from Hong Kong on June 23. Venezuela, Nicaragua and Bolivia have offered him asylum but the logistics of seeking refuge in those countries has been complicated by the fact that his US travel documents have been revoked.