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[-] halcyoncmdr@piefed.social 108 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

That's what happens when the US waits to cancel your passport until you are stuck in the transit hub of a Russian airport waiting for your next flight out of the country.

iIRC it took like 12 months until Russia granted Snowden asylum and he could leave the airport hub.

[-] SarahFromOz@lemmy.world 54 points 1 week ago

Like that Tom Hanks movie! I think it's called The Terminal

[-] halcyoncmdr@piefed.social 75 points 1 week ago

Which itself is based on the true story of Mehran Karimi Nasseri who lived in Terminal 1 of Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport, France, from 1988 to 2006.

It is uncommon, but passports being invalidated during travel does happen.

[-] SomethingBurger@jlai.lu 23 points 1 week ago

Wikipedia says this guy was mostly responsible for what happened to him. He allegedly lost his passport, and refused any help from France and Belgium.

[-] mech@feddit.org 17 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

He actually sent his passport away to Belgium while en route to London, refused to sign a new passport with his real name, demanding one with the name Sir Alfred and no mention of his Iranian citizenship, and returned to the airport even after he had left it once to go to the hospital.
Sounds to me like he got used to his life there, with the fame and not needing to work.
He also made $200k from the filming rights.

[-] halcyoncmdr@piefed.social 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Wikipedia says this guy was mostly responsible for what happened to him. He allegedly lost his passport, and refused any help from France and Belgium.

No idea what the fuck you're reading, because the Wikipedia page doesn't seem to say any of that...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden

Belgium isn't even mentioned on the Wikipedia page. And France is mentioned specifically from an interview in 2019 where Snowden said he had requested asylum in 2013, but it was denied under President Hollande. A second request later was received favorably by Justice Minister Nicole Belloubet under President Macron, but no other members of the French government expressed support. That's not at all refusing help from either of them. In fact there are multiple sections in there about his asylum requests to dozens of countries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden#Flight_from_the_United_States

In fact, the Wikipedia page goes pretty in depth about his intended travel out of Hong Kong. The US revoked his passport, it wasn't lost.

His plans upon leaving Hong Kong never had anything to do with US allies, it very specifically avoided them because of US leverage.

So where, on Wikipedia, are you reading the exact opposite of what the Wikipedia page says?

[-] GreatBlue@infosec.pub 63 points 1 week ago

I'm pretty sure, the comment of Something Burger was related to Mehran Karimi Nasseri

[-] Nastybutler@lemmy.world 17 points 1 week ago

That's a lot of words for someone with poor reading comprehension skills

[-] fartographer@lemmy.world 10 points 1 week ago

Little aggressive, but in your defense, pronouns with limited context can be difficult sometimes.

Unless this is supposed to be a shit post, in which case, bravo.

[-] Mononomi@lemmy.world 38 points 1 week ago

40 days but that's still quite some

[-] halcyoncmdr@piefed.social 24 points 1 week ago

Ah you are right. I seem to have gotten it mixed up with the initial 1 year refugee status he was granted, before the first 3 year temporary residency permit.

Either way, the US tried to prevent his leaving Hong Kong but however they submitted it, their request didn't comply with Hong Kong law so there was no legal basis for them to detain him.

Four countries had offered Snowden permanent asylum: Ecuador, Nicaragua, Bolivia, and Venezuela. No direct flights between Moscow and Venezuela, Bolivia, or Nicaragua existed, however, and the U.S. pressured countries along his route to hand him over. His intended destination was Ecuador, but his passport being revoked while he was in flight from Hong Kong meant he was stuck in Russia.

He had given all copies of the evidence he had to journalists in Hong Kong reporting on American issues, specifically so when travelling through Russia they would have nothing to leverage.

Snowden said in July 2013 that he decided to bid for asylum in Russia because he felt there was no safe way to reach Latin America.

[-] Aqarius@lemmy.world 23 points 1 week ago

Considering they grounded Evo Morales' plane because they thought he was on it, I'd say that's a fair bet.

[-] pfried@reddthat.com 11 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

It was revoked before he left China. https://apnews.com/general-news-587786e6e63b4dc2b70c471606d7f584

That didn't stop China from ignoring his asylum request following his release of documentation of hacked Chinese systems and kicking him out of the country because whether you have a valid passport doesn't matter for geopolitical issues. https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1259508/edward-snowden-us-government-has-been-hacking-hong-kong-and-china

Russia was under no obligation to keep Snowden instead of letting him continue to Ecuador. Putin just wanted to use him as a bargaining chip with the U.S., but the U.S. understood that all his documents were already public, so Putin hasn't been able to play that card well yet.

this post was submitted on 19 Apr 2026
507 points (100.0% liked)

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