Russia receives no substantial extradition request on Snowden from US

Russia has not received from the United States a substantial and legally correct document for fugitive former CIA contractor Edward Snowden's extradition, a lawyer assisting the whistleblower said Wednesday.

"If you want (Snowden to be extradited), please refer to some law provision and send us a proper document, which should be correct in legal terms. But there is none," Anatoly Kucherena said in an interview with a local television station.

Kucherena noted that "the 'give him back' principle is absolutely unfair and wrong ... Snowden is not a thing but a human being."

Russia was "carrying out a humane mission" in considering the granting of asylum to Snowden, and nobody could accuse Russia of "unfriendly behavior and attitude to the country insisting on his extradition," the Interfax news agency quoted him as saying.

Lon Snowden, father of Edward, said in the same interview via on-line link that he hoped his son could find protection in Russia, and he intended to come to Moscow.

Lon had said he hoped Snowden would return home. The father, in another interview with the Washington Post on Tuesday, attributed the change to "the behavior of our government, both the Congress and the Justice Department."

"How can my son possibly get a fair trial (in America), possibly?" Lon said.

He went on saying he had been following the media and members of the Congress in the last two months closely.

"So many talking heads ... who have absolutely no clue to whom Edward Snowden is," he said. "I watched that and I realized that it is absolutely propaganda."

Describing his son as "the brilliant one" who was born to a patriotic family, Lon said he had never known him "to be cruel or harsh with anyone, in anyway at anytime."

The father slammed claims that Snowden was a traitor for money, saying "he has chosen to release information at great expense ... to share with the American people that he believes the constitutional rights are being violated by the government."

Snowden arrived at Moscow's Sheremetyevo International Airport on June 23, and has reportedly been stranded in the transit zone since then as his passport was revoked by his government. He faced espionage charges after disclosing a classified intelligence surveillance project code-name PRISM.

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