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POLITICS: Cautious Optimism on Arms Trafficker’s Extradition to U.S.

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Sep 9 2010 (IPS) - In the shadowy global network of arms traffickers, Victor Bout enjoyed a special place, according to Western intelligence sources. He was the poster boy, the kingpin, the lord of this deadly illegal trade.

But the 43-year-old former Soviet military translator dismisses such descriptions, preferring instead to be known as a Russian businessman who owned a fleet of planes that transported cargo to the world’s trouble spots, where wars raged.

Yet as he languishes in a Thai jail awaiting a possible flight to the United States to face criminal charges, another side of Bout is as relevant – the over a decade-long streak he has enjoyed escaping the law, always being one step ahead of U.S. and international law enforcement officials.

His luck, however, appeared to have run out in March 2008, when he was arrested in a swanky Bangkok hotel in a sting operation that included U.S. agents posing off as arms buyers from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia (FARC).

Last month it appeared that Washington finally had their man. Thailand’s appeals court ruled in mid-August that Bout could be extradited, paving the way for the Russian to appear before a U.S. court to face charges that included a conspiracy to kill U.S. citizens and providing support to FARC, which Washington has labelled a terrorist group.

Yet Bout still remains in the Thai jail following fresh charges that the U.S. government brought against him, including money laundering. A court date has been fixed on Oct. 4, although Washington, in a bid to get Bout in its clutches, has asked the Thai Attorney General’s office to drop these new charges.

Little wonder why analysts familiar with the likes of Bout are still reluctant to rule that luck has finally run out for the man who inspired the 2005 film ‘Lord of War’, starring Nicholas Cage. Prosecuting arms traffickers has been a difficult challenge, they say.

World arms traffickers have operated since the collapse of the Cold War. They are neither government agents supplying weapons to support proxy wars across Asia, Africa or Latin America nor “rouge” elements transporting weapons across national boundaries as individual operatives.

“A significant proportion of grey-market arms trafficking is connected to states,” says Anthony Davis, a Bangkok-based security analyst of IHS-Jane’s, a military information group. “Individuals like Bout enjoy links to, and in many cases (enjoy) the protection of, states. It is a mistake to portray them as rouge criminal elements.”

“It is difficult today to make a clear-cut distinction between private operatives and the state in this business, because the privateers generally need to clear consignments with state intelligence services,” he tells IPS. “They are very much tied into state networks of weapons producers and intelligence services.”

With such protection and an absence of political will, arms traffickers have been able to enjoy wide latitude to operate, Davis confirms. “We don’t see very much political determination to bring these people to justice.”

Weak international laws have also permitted a trade across international boundaries by traffickers who, besides Russia, come from China, Israel, South Africa, Syria and the U.S.

“It is a multinational cast of characters. They do function under the radar,” says Kathi Austin, an arms trafficking expert who has followed Bout’s career for 15 years.

But the Russian, who was arrested in Bangkok for allegedly offering to sell FARC surface-to-air-missiles, AK-47s, C-4 explosives and landmines, was “one of the best entrepreneurs in the arms trade,” reveals Austin. “He built a business empire.”

The 1990s saw an explosion of civil wars in Africa that provided a “business opportunity” for Bout, she adds. “He was supplying arms for gold and for diamonds in the Congo. He was also an arms trafficker who supplied weapons during the Rwanda genocide.”

Bout’s business dealings, by reportedly tapping into the arsenals of the former Soviet Union, also involved the much publicised case of former Liberian President Charles Taylor, currently facing justice at a war crimes tribunal for his role in Sierra Leone’s civil war during the 1990s.

In 2000, the elusive Bout was accused in a U.N. report on Angola of breaking arms embargoes to supply weapons to the African country’s UNITA rebels. That year also saw him charged with forging documents in the Central African Republic and convicted in absentia.

Bout, who is fluent in six languages, operated a fleet of planes that carried weapons to hot spots like Africa. He had flown missions for the U.S. government in Iraq even after he was blacklisted in Washington. He had also been reportedly hired by the United Nations for the latter’s operations in conflict-torn Somalia.

When asked by IPS, the U.N.’s spokesperson in New York refused to deny or confirm Bout’s link to the world body. But Alla Bout, wife of the jailed Russian, says, “Victor’s planes also worked for the U.N.”

Yet this picture of ‘The Merchant of Death’, the title of a 2007 book about Bout, co-authored by U.S. national Douglas Farah, is far from the image that Alla has been trying to project as she defends her husband’s innocence.

“American charges against me supporting terrorism and illegal arms dealings are entirely a fabrication of U.S. intelligence,” she read from a statement prepared by her husband to a packed press conference in the Thai capital recently. “The U.S. is trying to create an image of me as an illegal arms dealer. I have never traded weapons.”

“My husband is innocent,” added Alla. “He owned a legitimate air cargo business and worked with governments. Arms were carried, but they had nothing to do with the arms trade.”