Russia says it has no authority to expel Snowden; Kerry: ‘Deeply troubling’
Source: Washington Post
MOSCOW — Despite a direct request from the United States to return Edward Snowden to U.S. soil to face charges of leaking government secrets, Russian officials said Monday that they had no legal authority to detain the fugitive former government contractor, who arrived in Moscow from Hong Kong on Sunday and was seeking asylum in Ecuador, reportedly by way of Havana.
A frustrated Secretary of State John F. Kerry said he was troubled by the apparent refusal of fellow world powers China and Russia to respond to espionage charges the United States had filed against Snowden, who leaked top-secret documents about U.S. surveillance programs.
“It is a very serious question for all of us in all our relationships,” Kerry said. “There is no small irony here,” Kerry added, posing the hypothetical question of whether Snowden sought refuge in China and Russia “because they’re such powerful bastions of Internet freedom.”
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Vladimir Lukin, Russia’s human rights ombudsman and a former ambassador to the United States, told the Interfax news agency that Russia had no authority to expel Snowden, as Washington was asking it to do. Russian officials said travelers who never leave a secure transit zone inside an airport — which means not crossing passport control — are not officially on Russian soil. Snowden did not have a Russia visa, several officials said, and therefore could not leave the transit zone.
In addition, Russia and the United States do not have a bilateral extradition treaty, although Kerry said Moscow was obligated to cooperate under international law.
“The Americans can’t demand anything,” Lukin said, referring to the saga dismissively. “Detective stories are good bedtime reading.”
Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/russia-says-it-has-no-authority-to-expel-snowden/2013/06/24/325281f2-dcaf-11e2-bd83-e99e43c336ed_story.html
Much more at the link!
PB
= new reply since forum marked as read
and sad watching how U.S. officials are reacting and being played by the world. 
Last edited Mon Jun 24, 2013, 09:30 PM - Edit history (1)
Then maybe, just maybe, we should stop spying our own citizens and the citizens of other countries, then we might return to a semblance of a rule of laws nation.
Ya know, just sayin'.
Schadenfreude... 
The world's greatest sponsor of State terrorism - so used to pushing everyone around. And droning them to death if they annoy us. Gotta love it!
"The Americans can’t demand anything,” Lukin said, referring to the saga dismissively. “Detective stories are good bedtime reading.”
LMAO!
who don't like to be spied on by their own Government are also getting a kick out of it. It serves those politicians in Washington right!
Greenwald has already stated that Snowden has many documents which he DIDN'T release, because it would cause such harm to US surveillance around the planet.
I wonder if he will change his mind, after he's assassinated by the CIA ?
("Upon my untimely death, please release the following 100,000 documents to these 1000 Internet servers..."
Maybe SoS Kerry will ask his "fellow world powers" to close the Internet then, until he can clean it up ?
