Shortly after being convicted in 2011 on charges including conspiracy to kill US citizens, Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout delivered a message of defiance through his attorney in the face of the prospect decades in prison.
More than a decade later, Mr. Bout, 55, was liberated, despite serving less than half of his 25-year prison sentence. On Thursday, he was exchanged for American basketball star Brittney Griner, who has been imprisoned in Russia for 10 months.
Russian officials have been pressing Bout to return since he was convicted by a New York jury on four counts, including conspiracy to kill an American citizen. Prosecutors said he agreed to sell anti-aircraft weapons to drug enforcement informants who posed as arms buyers for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.
The attorney general at the time, Eric Holder, called Mr Bout (pronounced “Boot”) “one of the world’s most prolific arms dealers.” Mr. Bout became infamous among US intelligence officials, earning the nickname “The Trader of Death” for evading capture for years. His feat helped inspire the 2005 film “Lord of War,” starring Nicolas Cage as a character modeled after Mr. Bout.
He is perhaps the most famous Russian being held by the United States and the prisoner Russia has lobbied most vigorously for his return. His return to Russia is likely to rekindle debate over the wisdom of engaging in prisoner exchanges with Americans whom the United States considers “wrongfully detained” – as was the case with Ms. Another American is still being held in Russia, says Paul Whelan, a former Marine.
In an interview with journalists, Mr. Bout said: many times negative Allegedly that he worked for Russian intelligence agencies. But Mark Galeotti, an expert on Russia’s security services, said there were strong indications – Mr Bout’s education, social and professional networks as well as logistical skills – that he was a member of, or at least closely cooperate with, the Russian military. intelligence agency, known as GRU
“That is also the view of the United States and other authorities – and it explains why Russia has been so aggressive,” said Mr. Galeotti, lecturer on Russia and transnational crime at University College London. campaigning to bring him back.” July. “All countries are trying to get their citizens out of the rough jurisdictions, but it’s clear that the Russians’ particular priority is getting Viktor Bout back.”
Bout grew up in Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan, until he enlisted in the Soviet army at the age of 18. After a stint in the army, he studied Portuguese at the Military Foreign Language Institute in Moscow, a joint facility for Russian intelligence. service, and eventually became an officer in the Air Force.
The Soviet Union disintegrated shortly after Bout left the army. As the Russian economy collapsed and criminal groups flourished, he moved to the United Arab Emirates and founded a freight company that has grown to a fleet of 60 aircraft.
With military supplies from former Soviet states leaking onto the black market, prosecutors say, his shipping empire transferred guns to rebels, rebels and terrorists across the globe. around the world. In the new era of privatization in Russia, arms dealers can use old Soviet-era social, military and business networks, and develop shell companies to conceal their dealings. Translate.
Bout is accused of selling weapons to Al Qaeda, the Taliban and militants in Rwanda. According to some investigation and his US indictmenthe and his associates bypassing arms embargoes in Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Algeria, where he sells weapons to both government forces and rebels fighting them.
His ability to avoid capture further increased his notoriety among Western intelligence officials. In 1995, the Taliban downed one of his planes in Afghanistan, confiscating the cargo, and jailing the crew. Bout and Russian officials somehow managed to get the crew out of the country: In 2003, he said New York Times Magazine “they were extracted,” and in 2012, New Yorkers reported, he said that they simply escaped.
US authorities finally caught him in Bangkok in 2008. Mr. Bout met undercover agents of the Drug Enforcement Administration who he believed represented rebels from the Armed Forces. The Colombian Revolution, or FARC, which the United States considers a terrorist organization until last year.
When potential buyers told him the weapon could be used to kill the American pilot, Bout replied: “We have the same enemy,” prosecutors said.
Thai authorities arrested him on the spot. He was extradited to the United States in 2010 and two years later sentenced to 25 years.
In the years since, Russian authorities have maintained Mr. Bout’s innocence and raised him as a possible swap for other prominent Americans and Ukrainians held by Russia. He is at the center of a Russian campaign, “we don’t give up on ourselves,” that has deemed his arrest unfair and politically motivated.
Mr Galeotti, a Russia expert, said Mr Bout’s exchange was a top priority for Russia “a matter of honor and ruthless pragmatism”.
Russian intelligence agencies “have inherited from the former Soviet KGB a culture that is evident to their own agents – ‘we’ll take you back’. That kind of loyalty to yourself really matters when you expect people to put you in jeopardy.”
It is not clear whether Mr. Bout’s return will encourage Russia to arrest possible Westerners; Moscow denies the accusation of deliberately arresting people to force exchanges.
Andrei Soldatov, a Russian journalist and security services expert who is a senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis, says that although Mr Bout is the most famous Russian prisoner in the US, but There are still many other Russians in American prisons. especially for hacking.
Mr. Soldatov said Russian authorities learned to “create hostage banks” in the early 2000s during a brutal war with the breakaway Chechnya region, shortly after President Vladimir V Putin came to power.
“It was a lesson they never forgot,” Mr. Soldatov said. Referring to the Russian security services, he said, “It makes complete sense, from their point of view, to do the same with the US.”
Ivan Nechepurenko contribution report.
