One of the world’s most notorious arms dealers, suspected of supplying weapons to the Taliban and Al Qaeda and of pouring huge arms shipments into Africa’s civil wars with his own private air fleet, was arrested by Thai authorities in a hotel today after a tip from U.S. intelligence.
The Justice Department said that federal prosecutors in New York would unseal criminal charges against the arms dealer, Viktor Bout, 41, and one of his associates later Thursday, charging them with conspiring to provide material support to a terrorist organization. Such a step would mean that American prosecutors think it likely Mr. Bout will be brought to the United States to stand trial.
Bout has been a wanted man in numerous countries around the world for years, but has been allowed to operate with impunity because many governments (the U.S. included) has found him useful over the years.
Bout single handedly supplied all the weapons used in the bloody civil wars of Sierra Leone, Liberia, Somalia, Rwanda, and other countries in Africa.
It has been said that Victor Bout can get weapons into places that were next to impossible for anyone else to get to. Bout owns an entire fleet of Russian transport planes registered under constantly changing front companies. He has a dedicated group of dare devil pilots who have become experts at landing massive cargo planes on dirt landing strips in some of the worst places on earth.
Victor Bout was also the inspiration for the movie “Lord of War” starring Nicholas Cage as international arms dealer.
Mr. Bout’s arrest in Thailand came after a Colombian military raid into Ecuador on Saturday, during which the Colombian Army killed 24 guerrillas and obtained a computer laptop belonging to a senior FARC rebel commander. It was not immediately clear whether the arrest and the seizure of information on the laptop were related.
The arrest came on a tip from the United States Drug Enforcement Agency that Mr. Bout was traveling to Thailand, said Police Col. Petcharat Sengchai of the Crime Suppression Division, who led the arresting team.
Colonel Petcharat said Mr. Bout, who is a Russian citizen, was wanted for “the procurement of weapons and explosives for Colombian rebels,” referring to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, a leftist insurgency that has been fighting Colombia’s government for decades and is known to fund itself partly through the cocaine trade.
The police said Mr. Bout had been arrested at noon at the Silom Sofitel Hotel in Bangkok and was being held in the offices of the Crime Suppression Division. His assets and front companies were targeted by the Treasury in 2005 because of his connections to Charles G. Taylor, the former president of Liberia who faces charges of war crimes.
A security analyst in Bangkok, who had spoken to the Thai authorities and who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Mr. Bout had been in Thailand since January and was regularly changing hotels. He was arrested during a meeting with someone from Russia or Eastern Europe, the analyst said, and American counter-terrorism officials were interrogating him. The analyst said the Thai government was anxious to get him out of the country, and the American authorities were anxious to get him as well.
Anyone interested in reading about Victor Bout’s exploits in great detail should read Merchant of Death: Money, Guns, Planes, and the Man Who Makes War Possible. It’s a fascinating book that details Bout’s business dealings and how he did them, etc.
-Chris Jones
