Viktor Bout, the famed Russian arms smuggler, supplier to anybody anywhere in the world who could pay the right price (such as, say, Liberia’s Charles Taylor, FARC in Colombia, and the U.S. military), has been nabbed in Thailand. From the AP:
One of the world’s most notorious arms dealers was arrested Thursday in Bangkok on allegations that he supplied Colombian rebels with arms and explosives, Thai police said.Russian Viktor Bout was arrested in his hotel room in the capital, Bangkok, on a warrant issued by a Thai court, said Police Lt. Gen. Pongpat Chayapan, head of the Crime Suppression Bureau. The warrant stemmed from an earlier one issued by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, he said.
A U.S. Embassy spokesman “congratulated” Thai police for the arrest but could not provide details about the role U.S. officials played in it.
Funny, that last bit, since journalists Douglas Farah and Stephen Braun reported in their book on Bout, “Merchant of Death: Money, Guns, Plans, and the Man Who Makes War Possible,” that both the U.S. military and defense contractors KBR and Dyncorp had used Bout’s services in the aftermath of the Iraq war.
Even after President Bush signed an order freezing Bout’s assets, the Pentagon continued using his planes, they reported, to get reconstruction supplies into Baghdad. All in all, they say, his planes flew hundreds of flights from 2003 to 2006, even after his work for the Defense Department was exposed in 2004. Bout may have been an international criminal, but he got the job done.
But now Thai police have nabbed him. So congrats!
Update: Turns out that U.S. authorities were in on the bust, which was a “four-month sting by the Drug Enforcement Administration with secret help from security officials in four other nations.” Go figure.