Lawyer: Snowden requests to extend asylum in Russia

This photo provided by The Guardian Newspaper in London shows Edward Snowden, who worked as a contract employee at the National Security Agency, on Sunday, June 9, 2013, in Hong Kong. The National Security Agency, working with the British government, has secretly been unraveling encryption technology that billions of Internet users rely upon to keep their electronic messages and confidential data safe from prying eyes, according to published reports Thursday, Sept. 5, 2013, based on internal U.S. government documents.(AP Photo/The Guardian, Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras)

A Russian lawyer for former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden said his client has applied to extend his stay in Russia.

Anatoly Kucherena said in comments quoted on Wednesday by Russian news agencies that Mr. Snowden has applied to Russia’s migration authorities since his one-year permit is expiring at the end of July.

Mr. Snowden got stranded in a Moscow airport in 2013 on his way from Hong Kong to Cuba, shortly after he revealed the NSA’s sprawling program tapping phones across the country. He received asylum in Russia, attracting the ire of the United States.