Will Snowden join ranks of airport denizens?
Unclear if former NSA contractor stuck in transit in Moscow
AP
... Putin said Tuesday that Snowden has not passed through Russian immigration, so he is not technically in Russia. That’s more a diplomatic convention than a legal reality, according to James Hathaway, director of the Program on Refugee and Asylum Law at the University of Michigan law school.
“Moscow airport is as much a part of Russia as is the Kremlin,” Hathaway said. “Many nations pretend that airport transit lounges are not part of their territory, indeed not under their jurisdiction. As a matter of international law, this is completely false.”
Nonetheless, airport transit areas provide a limbo zone in which human beings can sometimes get lost. Moscow’s Sheremetyevo has seen crowds of refugees from countries including Afghanistan and Somalia living in corridors awaiting refugee status, and Russia has been accused of using the airport as a convenient way of stalling asylum requests.
In 2010, the U.S. State Department cited the case of 16 Somali asylum seekers who “spent several months living in the airport’s transit zone, at times compelled to beg for food from airline passengers.” The State Department report said they were unable to apply for Russian asylum and were forced to turn to the United Nations for help ...
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/06/27/world/will-snowden-join-ranks-of-airport-denizens/
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