Thai Court: 'Merchant of Death' Can Be Extradited

(Aug. 20) -- Suspected Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout can be extradited to the U.S., a Thai appeals court ruled today. The decision effectively marks an end to American authorities' decadelong pursuit of the man known as the "Merchant of Death," who is alleged to have supplied weapons to the Taliban and genocidal African dictators, among others.

It's been 2 1/2 years since Bout, the inspiration for the 2005 Nicolas Cage movie "Lord of War," was arrested in a Bangkok hotel following an elaborate sting operation. Using a paid informant (one of Bout's former lieutenants, British citizen Andrew Smulian, according to Mother Jones), the Drug Enforcement Administration persuaded the alleged arms dealer to meet several men pretending to be members of Colombian rebel outfit FARC -- recognized as a terrorist outfit in the U.S. That fake deal would supposedly see FARC provided with millions of dollars of arms, The Washington Post noted, including 100 Russian shoulder-fired missiles, capable of blasting planes out of the sky.

Bout, an alleged former KGB officer who speaks at least six languages, met the undercover DEA agents at a hotel in the Thai capital in March 2008 and was seized by local police. It should have been easy for the U.S. to extradite the alleged gunrunner from Thailand, as a treaty between the two countries says that America doesn't have to prove the validity of the charges leveled against a suspect. The U.S. simply has to show that the suspect has a case to face.

But Bout, 43, wasn't a common criminal. After two decades allegedly spent shipping guns and bombs to conflict zones, he had become a wealthy man, with many powerful friends back home. Moscow launched a fierce campaign to get him released and almost succeeded.

A criminal court ruled in August 2009 that it didn't have the authority to extradite Bout because FARC wasn't listed as a terrorist group in Thailand -- a decision praised by the Kremlin. That verdict was overruled today by an appeals court, which declared that the charges faced by Bout were criminal, not political.

"Given that the defendant was charged with conspiring to kill American citizens and American officers, conspiring to source ... anti-aircraft missiles, and acquire weapons for a terrorist group like FARC -- these are criminal offenses not just in the country where he is a plaintiff but also the country receiving the charges," the ruling said, according to The Associated Press. The court ordered that Bout must now be extradited within three months or set free.

Throughout the lengthy extradition process, Bout has repeatedly claimed that he's innocent of all charges, saying that his air cargo business was entirely legitimate. The Russian media has often portrayed him as a wronged businessman whom America is conveniently trying to blame for the global trade in illegal arms. And a month after his arrest, his wife told the London Times that Bout was "a very sensitive and romantic person, an avid reader who writes his own poetry."

But that saintly image doesn't match with the findings of journalists and international investigators who have dug into his past. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Bout started to build a fleet of old military cargo planes. He also recruited daredevil pilots from across the former USSR willing to "fly into those conflict regions that were so dangerous that nobody else would risk it," author Misha Glenny wrote in his 2008 expose of globalized crime, McMafia.

Glenny reports that Bout supplied both the Taliban and the Northern Alliance with weapons during the Afghan civil war in the 1990s. And in 2000, the United Nation accused him of fueling bloodshed across Africa by ferrying heavy weapons, automatic rifles and ammunition to rebel groups controlling diamond mines in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Writing in The Washington Post on Thursday, Ed Royce -- the ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on terrorism -- noted that "former Liberian President Charles Taylor, now facing charges of war crimes, relied on Bout to arm his reign of terror in West Africa. Thousands of limbless victims are part of Bout's legacy."

Bout hasn't done himself any favors by boasting about palling around with bloodthirsty tyrants. Speaking from his Thai prison in 2008, Bout admitted working for his "very close friend" Jean-Pierre Bemba -- a warlord who became vice president of the Congo and is now facing trial in The Hague for orchestrating mass rape and murder and enlisting child soldiers. "I know Bemba very well, and I am telling you from any point of view he would never give any orders, especially to rape women in the Central African Republic," he told British journalist Nick Paton Walsh.

But not all of Bout's clients were on the world's most wanted list. His ability to get goods delivered to the most dangerous places on earth meant that his companies were sometimes called on by the U.S. Department of Defense to deliver supplies to Iraq, and by the U.N. to land peacekeepers in East Timor.

Bout intends to keep on fighting against his extradition to the U.S.

"I am going to submit a request to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Cabinet," his lawyer, Lak Nittiwattanawichan, told The Associated Press, adding that the decision was a result of diplomatic pressure from the White House. "I will also submit a request to the king and queen."

But the alleged gunrunner seems to know that his flying days are finally over. After the verdict was read out, Bout -- clad in an orange prison uniform and shackled in leg irons -- hugged his weeping wife and teenage daughter and started to cry himself.