TRUMP MULLS PARDON FOR EDWARD SNOWDEN

US President Donald Trump said on Saturday (Sunday, August 16, 2020 in Manila) he is considering a pardon for Edward Snowden, the former US National Security Agency (NSA) contractor - now living in Russia - whose spectacular leaks shook the US intelligence community in 2013, Raphael Satter wrote for Reuters.

The Republican president's comments followed an interview here Trump gave to the New York Postthis week in which he said of Snowden that "there are a lot of people that think that he is not being treated fairly" by US law enforcement. “I’m going to start looking at it,” Trump told reporters about a possible pardon, speaking at a news conference at his Bedminster, New Jersey golf club.

US authorities for years have wanted Snowden returned to the US to face a criminal trial on espionage charges brought in 2013. Snowden fled the United States and was given asylum in Russia after he leaked a trove of secret files in 2013 to news organizations that revealed vast domestic and international surveillance operations carried out by the NSA.

Snowden’s Russian lawyer, Anatoly Kucherena, told Russian RIA news agency the US should not simply pardon him, but should drop all possible prosecutions against Snowden as he had not committed any crimes. “He was acting not only in the interest of the American citizens, but in the interest of all the humankind,” Kucherena said.