Edward Snowden, whose leaks of classified US data have provoked worldwide uproar, met on Thursday in Moscow with a member of Germany’s parliamentary intelligence committee who is pressing for the fugitive to testify in Berlin about global surveillance by the National Security Agency.
On TV, Hans-Christian Stroebele, an opposition legislator, said Snowden was in principle willing to speak to German prosecutors or to a German parliamentary committee, but needed assurances he would be safe from extradition to the United States.
The meeting was a coup for Stroebele and his Green Party and was likely to embarrass Chancellor Angela Merkel who has withheld any support for Snowden for fear of upsetting Germany’s increasingly delicate intelligence sharing with the United States.
Snowden, who has been charged with espionage by the United States, has however been repeatedly praised by German opposition parties who see him as an ally in beefing up privacy laws.
Stroebele’s secrecy-shrouded trip, accompanied by two reporters, was disclosed on a current affairs programme on ARD public television. He said Snowden was “healthy and cheerful,” but had pointed out his complicated legal position.
Hours earlier, Snowden’s Kremlin-connected lawyer Anatoly Kucherena denied to Russian news agencies that Snowden was available to answer questions from the West about the electronic surveillance.
“Snowden lives in Russia according to Russian laws and cannot leave the country because otherwise he would lose his (refugee) status,” Kucherena told Interfax.
Snowden was given asylum for a year in Russia, on the condition that he stops leaking US intelligence information.
However, his previous leaks continue to stir stormy diplomacy, with allegations that the National Security Agency (NSA) tapped German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s mobile phone since 2002 deepening the spying dispute with Berlin.
Kucherena said Snowden had been offered a job with a large Russian internet company. Snowden’s first day at work would be on Friday, and his task will be to maintain and develop one of Russia’s biggest websites, Anatoly Kucherena told Russian news agencies.
He did not name the website, but Russian media identified it as Vkontakte, the country’s biggest social media website.
Vkontakte founder Pavel Durov has reportedly made Snowden a job offer, and his company was the only Russian technology firm which did not deny that Snowden would work there, the RIA Novosti news agency reported.
Stroebele, who is also a lawyer, said he had a long discussion with Snowden about legal safeguards and even proposed German investigators fly to Moscow to obtain testimony from him.
The Green said he would brief his parliamentary committee, a vetted cross-party panel with access to all the German intelligence chiefs, and would publish on Friday a letter from Snowden to Germany’s government, parliament and prosecutions office.
ARD said the German parliamentary research office had advised that Germany could legally offer Snowden safe passage and reject a US demand to extradite the former NSA contractor by citing grounds of international law, humanitarian reasons or a national interest.
The United States has invalidated Snowden’s passport and sent Germany and other nations an extradition request.
US embassy in Germany
In another development, US ambassador to Germany John Emerson rejected suggestions that he open up the embassy to German inspection, to quash suspicions that there is an NSA listening post on the roof.
The embassy overlooks the iconic Brandenburg Gate and the German parliament, and is less than a kilometre from Merkel’s office.
“I am not going to comment on the structure of this building,” he said, when asked by a reporter about claims that the fourth floor of the embassy was used for eavesdropping.
Emerson was making his first comments to the media after being summoned last week to the German Foreign Ministry to receive a protest over the Merkel phone tapping allegations.
He admitted the issue would overshadow US-German relations, and said it would be his job as ambassador to rebuild trust.
“It’s going to be a long process. I am fully aware of that,” he said.
In Washington, the US Senate Intelligence Committee advanced a bill that would place new restrictions on the NSA’s surveillance programme. It would restrict the bulk collection of phone records, require a suspicion of terrorism before the records can be searched, limit access to the database of records and institute a 10-year prison sentence for unauthorised access to the database.
A separate measure under consideration in the Senate Judiciary Committee would go further by ending the bulk collection of phone records altogether.