Snowden won’t be extradited: Putin

Our special services never worked with Mr. Snowden and aren’t working with him today. Mr. Snowden is a free man, and the sooner he chooses his final destination the better it is for us and for him.

— Vladimir Putin, president of Russia

MOSCOW • Russian president Vladimir Putin bluntly rejected U.S. pleas to turn over National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden on Tuesday, saying he is free to travel wherever he wants and insisting that Rus- sian security agencies haven’t contacted him.

Mr. Snowden is in the transit zone of a Moscow airport and has not passed through Russian immigration, Mr. Putin said, meaning he is not technically in Russia.

After arriving Sunday on a flight from Hong Kong, Mr. Snowden registered for a Ha- vana-bound flight from Moscow on Monday en route to Venezuela and then possible asylum in Ecuador, but he didn’t board the plane.

Mr. Snowden’s whereabouts since then have been a mystery, and Mr. Putin’s comments were the first time Russia has made clear it knows where he is.

Speculation has been rife that Russian security agencies might want to keep Mr. Snowden in Russia for a more thorough debriefing, but Mr. Putin denied that.

“Our special services never worked with Mr. Snowden and aren’t working with him today,” Mr. Putin said at a news conference during a visit to Finland.

Mr. Putin said that because there is no extradition agreement with the U.S., it couldn’t meet the U.S. request.

“Mr. Snowden is a free man, and the sooner he chooses his final destination the better it is for us and for him,” Mr. Putin said. “I hope it will not affect the business-like character of our relations with the U.S. and I hope that our partners will understand that.”

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Tuesday that though the United States does not have an extradition treaty with Russia, it wants Moscow to comply with common law practices between countries where fugitives are concerned.

“We would hope that Russia would not side with someone who is ‘a fugitive’ from justice,’” Mr. Kerry said.

The U.S. has revoked the passport of Mr. Snowden, a former CIA staffer who later was hired as a contractor for NSA.