Congrats to the Thai legal system, which has once again sided with international terrorists and refused to extradite the world's most notorious smuggler of arms to the U.S. for prosecution. Instead, they will send Viktor Bout back to his homeland, Russia, where he faces no charges and soon will be a free man to sell surface to air missles to insurgent movements around the world, including the Islamic revolt in southern Thailand. As long as they can raise the money from Islamic governments and wealthy Islamic individuals who agree with their fight for an independent Pattani nation. That shouldn't be too hard.
Congrats, Thai government. I predict this legal action to free Viktor Bout will someday return to bite you in the ass. I wonder who got the big, big, big payoff?
Washington Post has some background.
THE WIFE OF Viktor Bout, the international arms merchant nabbed last year by undercover American drug agents posing as weapons-hungry Colombian rebels, insists that her husband's interest in South America extends only to "tango lessons." Like his wife, Mr. Bout, a former Russian air force officer, has also taken the international community for fools while, U.S. officials say, he went about ferrying millions of dollars worth of military equipment to rogue nations, terrorist groups and rebels of every ideological stripe on four continents while insisting that he was an honest businessman. Now, despite evidence that he planned a huge sale of arms to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a Thai court has handed Mr. Bout a victory by rejecting his extradition to stand trial in the United States. Will Thailand allow Mr. Bout to continue playing the world for fools?
In the view of U.S. and international officials, Mr. Bout, dubbed "the Merchant of Death" by journalists Douglas Farah and Stephen Braun in their book of the same name, has probably done more to bust international sanctions and fuel bloody conflicts around the world than any man alive. Operating from his home in Moscow, where his close ties with military and intelligence circles apparently afforded him protection, he built what was believed to be the world's most formidable one-stop shop for black-market weaponry, up to and including tanks, helicopters and surface-to-air missiles. He controlled a large fleet of former Soviet aircraft, which he used to ferry goods anywhere and everywhere -- including into Baghdad on behalf of the United States following the invasion of Iraq. In a hugely profitable, two-decade-long career, his customers are believed to have included outlaw governments, armed factions and terrorists in the Philippines, Lebanon, Afghanistan and, especially, some of the more violent and lawless countries in Africa.
The noose started to tighten on Mr. Bout a few years ago, when his movements were cramped by an arrest warrant issued by Belgium, a travel ban imposed by the United Nations and sanctions levied by Washington. Possibly, it was a tougher business climate that led Mr. Bout to drop his guard and agree to travel to Thailand in March last year to meet with agents of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration posing as FARC rebels. Shortly after arriving at his hotel in Bangkok, Mr. Bout was arrested by Thai authorities working with the DEA.
Since then, the Kremlin, which has expressed its contempt for international law by tolerating or approving of Mr. Bout's arms enterprise, has pressed hard for his release, selling the Thais cheap oil, talking about selling them fighter jets and, as has been hinted by U.S. officials, offering bribes. Not long ago, one of the Thai judges hearing Mr. Bout's case mused publicly that the court's decision on his extradition would anger either Washington or Moscow. In a decision rendered Tuesday, the court handed Mr. Bout a victory, arguing that the FARC, notorious for its kidnapping and cocaine trafficking, was a political group, not a terrorist one, and in any event, no affair of Thailand's.
Thai prosecutors were expected to file an immediate appeal in order to block Mr. Bout's release. Moscow, which shudders to think of Mr. Bout telling American authorities what he may know of the Kremlin's possible ties to illegal arms trafficking, rejoiced. And it remained undecided whether Thai courts will help bring one of the world's most dangerous men to justice, or allow him to go free to pursue his passion for tango.
Jotman cuts to the chase and uncovers why Thailand is so happy to release international criminals:
The internationally-renowned arms dealer Viktor Bout has just been acquitted in the Thai court. The Russian state broadcaster ITAR-TASS reports:
Russian Foreign Ministry learned with much satisfaction the reports on Thai Criminal Court’s decision to free the Russian citizen Viktor Bout, who was suspected of planning a sale of weaponry to the Revolutionary Armed Force in Colombia (FARC), the ministry’ s deputy official spokesman, Igor Lyakin-Frolov said Tuesday. Earlier in the day, the Thai Criminal Court issued a non-guilty verdict to Viktor Bout, thus denying a request from the U.S. to extradite him. The court ruled the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) was a political organization and not a terrorist one, as the U.S. had claimed.
JOTMAN.COM Russian contributor Sanjuro, who translated a rare interview with Victor Bout from his prison cell in Thailand, summarizes an article from the Russian media pertaining to Bout's release:
A more detailed article in the Kommersant said that Thai court considered the case "politically motivated", and that the prosecution failed to provide trustworthy evidence of Bout's dealings, and of the fact that FARC, indeed, is a terrorist organization. It also briefly quoted an unnamed Russian diplomat in Thailand saying that Thailand simply didn't want to taint relationship with Russia, as in case with Iran (there was a similar case with an Iranian military officer caught in Thailand). The reason was described as Russia and Iran are seen by Thailand as "unpredictable" and hence it is better to please them, while the US has been a reliable partner and shall not be too angry with Bout's acquittal, especially as Obama administration has no vested interest in it.
But according to an article on the acquittal by Douglas Farah in Foreign Policy, "His extradition has become a top priority for an Obama administration seeking to prevent him from being released and further fanning conflicts around the world, particularly in his old stomping grounds of Afghanistan."
It should be noted that the Americans were only too happy to work with Bout when he served their purposes: in the first years of the Iraq war Bout flew "hundreds of missions for the U.S. military and civilian contractors, raking in millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars." Back then, it seems that Bout was too useful to the United States to get arrested.
While the Bush Administration was spending hundreds of thousands of US taxpayer dollars to hunt down Victor Bout, it was funneling hundreds of millions to military contractor Blackwater USA and its CEO Erik Prince. According to Wikipedia:
On August 3, 2009, two anonymous former Blackwater employees swore under oath that Prince may have murdered or facilitated the murder of individuals who were cooperating with federal authorities investigating the company. In addition, they said that Prince "views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe," and that Prince's companies "encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life."
If such allegations are found to be true, perhaps it would be unfair to Victor Bout to compare him to Erik Prince. An amoral arms merchant is not quite in the same league as a hate-inspired holy warrior.
American citizens might have been far better served had their government focused on keeping its own house in order rather than chasing one semi-retired Russian arms dealer halfway around the world.
Jotman on the Release of Viktor Bout
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