US whistleblower has told immigration officials that he fears for his life, says Kremlin-friendly lawyer

The US whistleblower Edward Snowden has applied for temporary asylum in Russia, telling immigration officials he fears for his life, three weeks after landing at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport.

"He's scared for his life, for his security," Snowden's lawyer Anatoly Kucherena told Russian state television, referring to US plans to prosecute Snowden.

Kucherena, a Kremlin-friendly lawyer, said he met Snowden for four hours at Sheremetyevo on Monday evening, and helped the US whistleblower complete the necessary documents to officially apply for asylum in Russia. Russia's federal migration service (FMS) said it received those documents on Tuesday.

Kucherena said Snowden was in a really difficult position. Facing charges in the US for leaking secret documents exposing surveillance programmes run by the National Security Agency and stripped of his US passport, Snowden has been living at the airport since 23 June.

"He's scared that he could be tortured or face the death penalty – that's how he answered questions posed to him by FMS officials," Kucherena said.

In a rare communication, Snowden contacted former Republican US senator Gordon Humphrey to thank him for his support. Humphrey had emailed Snowden to say: "I believe you have done the right thing in exposing what I regard as a massive violation of the United States constitution."

Snowden replied that he wished more members of Congress shared Humphrey's view. "My intention, which I outlined when this began, is to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them," he said, in an email published by Glenn Greenwald.

Reiterating that he would not leak any information that would harm Americans, he rejected media speculation that the Chinese or Russians could have stolen classified documents from his laptops. "Further, no intelligence service — not even our own — has the capacity to compromise the secrets I continue to protect. While it has not been reported in the media, one of my specialisations was to teach our people at DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) how to keep such information from being compromised even in the highest threat counter-intelligence environments (ie China)."

He added: "You may rest easy knowing I cannot be coerced into revealing that information, even under torture."

Vladimir Putin has vowed not to extradite Snowden to the US, but has twice said he hopes the US whistleblower will leave Russia soon. Snowden has said he would like to travel to Latin America, where Venezuela, Nicaragua and Bolivia have offered him asylum.

"He arrived in our country without an invitation," a smiling Putin told students on Monday. "He didn't fly to us – he flew in transit to other countries. But only when it became known that he was in the air, our American partners, in effect, blocked him from flying further.

"They themselves scared all other countries – no one wants to take him and this way, they blocked him on our territory. That's the present we got for Christmas."

Snowden has applied for temporary asylum in Russia, a status granted for one year that can be renewed on a yearly basis indefinitely, Kucherena said. The FMS has up to three months to deliver its decision on Snowden's application, he said.

A senior FMS official said that while his application was being considered, Snowden would remain inside Sheremtyevo or be moved to a government-run refugee shelter.

Despite official public statements to the contrary, speculation has been mounting inside Russia that the Kremlin would like to see Snowden remain in the country. That speculation grew after Snowden met a small group of Russian officials and representatives of international human rights groups last week.

Among those in attendance were Kucherina, who sits on the public chamber, a Kremlin advisory council; Vyacheslav Nikonov, a Kremlin-friendly MP; and Olga Kostina, a member of the public chamber and advisor to Russia's interior ministry, as well as a reported former advisor to the Federal Security Service, the main successor agency to the KGB.

Putin, a former KGB agent, said earlier this month that Snowden would have to agree to stop "bringing harm to our American partners" if he wanted to stay in Russia. Snowden subsequently withdrew an asylum request to Russia.

During his meeting last Friday, Snowden said he did not believe he was bringing harm to the US but was helping the American people with his revelations, participants said.

Russian and US relations have sunk to a post-cold war low amid differences over Syria, and Russian accusations of US meddling in Russia's domestic affairs. Barack Obama is due to visit the country in September.