Story highlights
NEW: A German lawmaker meets with Snowden and invites him to testify before parliament
Snowden to start job Friday with major Russian website, one of his lawyers says
Lawyer declines to name site, citing security concerns
Russia gave asylum to Snowden in August after he leaked info about U.S. spy programs
Weeks after getting asylum in Russia, Edward Snowden now has a job there, one of his lawyers says.
Snowden, the U.S. national security contractor turned leaker, will start a job Friday with a major Russian website, his attorney Anatoly Kucherena told CNN Thursday.
Kucherena declined to name the employer for security reasons. He told Russian state-run news agency RIA Novosti that Snowden would perform maintenance for the site.
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Snowden, a 30-year-old former government information technology contractor, collected information on spy programs – in which the National Security Agency mined phone and Internet metadata from thousands of people inside and outside of the United States – and exposed the programs to the media.
Anticipating legal consequences, he fled to Hong Kong in late May and flew on June 23 to Moscow, where he holed up at the airport for more than five weeks.
U.S. authorities have charged him with espionage and theft of government property.
After Russia granted him an asylum term of one year on August 1, he left the airport.
As Snowden got ready to start his new job, he was also meeting Thursday with a German lawmaker who visited him in Russia.
Hans-Christian Stroebele, a well-known leftist legislator in Germany, met with Snowden in Moscow to invite him to testify before the German parliament.
According to Stroebele’s website, during their meeting, Snowden gave him a letter addressed to the German parliament and to the country’s attorney general.
Stroebele, a member of the Green party, tweeted a picture of himself with Snowden and said he would hold a news conference Friday to provide details about the letter’s contents.
The meeting comes amid outrage among many German leaders over claims that an NSA surveillance operation targeted German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cell phone.
Germany’s Der Spiegel news magazine first reported the alleged operation, citing documents leaked by Snowden.
Stroebele sits on a parliamentary committee that monitors intelligence agencies.
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CNN’s Diana Magnay and Stefan Simons contributed to this report.