“Merchant of Death” Nabbed by Feds

In the “truth is stranger than fic­tion” cat­e­gory there’s this one.

Viktor Bout, leg­endary arms dealer and global scoundrel, was arrested yes­ter­day in a DEA-​​sponsored sting oper­a­tion in Thailand.

It is Bout whom Nicolas Cage mod­eled his “Yuri Orlov” char­ac­ter after in the (I thought pretty enter­tain­ing) “Lord of War” flick released in 2005.

There’s an excel­lent story on the arrest in the Washington Post today, and I’ve got to tell you, there’s some­thing in my Cold War bones that sort of admires the idea of a guy like Bout tak­ing advan­tage of all the con­flict around the world to make a profit. I mean, he sup­plied both sides of most of these third-​​world conflicts…

The list of Bout’s alleged cus­tomers since the early 1990s stretches across at least four con­ti­nents, with a focus on Africa, Western law enforce­ment offi­cials and human rights groups say. The Treasury Department accused him of sup­ply­ing arma­ments to both the Taliban and its al-​​Qaeda allies in Afghanistan before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, while also pro­vid­ing weapons to the oppos­ing Northern Alliance.

In Zaire, now known as Congo, Bout allegedly sup­plied arms to rebels fight­ing then-​​dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, turned around and helped Seko flee the coun­try, then flew human­i­tar­ian cargo into the dev­as­tated nation.

“One of the most fas­ci­nat­ing things is his abil­ity not only to sup­ply dif­fer­ent sides of a con­flict, but to live and tell about it with no one killing him,” said Douglas Farah, a for­mer Washington Post reporter and co-​​author of a 2007 book about Bout, “Merchant of Death.”

Other alleged cus­tomers over the years have included then-​​Liberian despot Charles Taylor, Unita rebels in Angola and the Revolutionary United Front in Sierra Leone. Cargo com­pa­nies con­nected to Bout were also linked to hun­dreds of sup­ply flights into Iraq for pri­vate con­trac­tors and the U.S. mil­i­tary early in the Iraq war. The com­plaint even states that, in the 1990s, Bout sought to drop “crates and boxes over Chechnya,” the site of a bit­ter seces­sion­ist rebel­lion inside Russia.

The straight-​​up busi­ness panache and rank amoral­ity of the whole thing is down­right intrigu­ing. In a voyeuris­tic way, how many of you secretly wish you could be Bout for just a day?

He promised an imme­di­ate deliv­ery of 100 Russian Igla mis­siles — a stan­dard item in the Russian army — plus thou­sands of assault rifles. For $5 mil­lion extra, he agreed to drop the items into the Colombian jun­gle using sev­eral hun­dred com­bat para­chutes, accord­ing to the com­plaint. Bout also promised, through Smulian, to pro­vide heli­copters “that could wipe out” other heli­copters, flight train­ing, and armor-​​piercing rock­ets, the com­plaint says.

I mean, agree­ing to air­drop rifles and anti-​​aircraft mis­siles with hun­dreds of para­chutes to FARC rebels as part of the deal? Brilliant — and ballsy!

– Christian

March 7th, 2008 | Around the Globe | 388323 Comments »http://defensetech.org/2008/03/07/merchant-of-death-nabbed-by-feds/%22Merchant+of+Death%22+Nabbed+by+Feds2008-03-07+12%3A32%3A16Ward You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.