About Bout – 3

From Der Spiegel.

About Bout - III

According to a recent Newsru.com report, Bout also left traces in Belorussia between 1996 and 1999, when the Russian arms dealer traded with the Lukashenko regime in what appear to have been Belorussian ventures connected with exporting arms and weaponry abroad.

Meanwhile, Bout's wife has said in an interview for the London Times newspaper that her husband is a "poet", not a "the lord of war".

See also: About Bout
About Bout - II

About Bout - II

Yulia Latynina has some caustic commentary on the Kremlin's support for the Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout,who is currently is being held in Thailand on suspicion of plotting to sell Russian-made Igla shoulder-fired missiles to Colombian drug cartels:

Bout was poised to sell a mere 100 of these missiles to drug barons, who had been planning to use them to shoot down U.S. helicopters foolish enough to fly over their plantations.

To his credit, Foreign Ministry spokesman Mikhail Kamynin said in a statement on Friday that the country would take all necessary measures to ensure that Bout's rights are not violated.

Bout was arrested on March 6 -- more than a month ago -- but Moscow's offer to help the international arms dealer came last week. In the age of instantaneous communications, such a slow response could only mean that some other method was used to establish a connection with authorities -- money, for example. When the problem of a Russian citizen arrested abroad can be resolved by a phone call, the result is seen right away. But when these issues are decided with cash payments, this is a more complicated process. Negotiations are delicate, and you have to work out how the money will be transferred. All of this takes a lot of time.

And the juiciest part of the Foreign Ministry's statement is that Russia has no plans to press charges against Bout. The power ministries have to account for all Igla missiles in their stock, and state arms exporter Rosoboronexport has a strict monopoly on the the trade of Igla and similar weaponry. This system of tight control was instituted to prevent black market sales to terrorists.

See also: About Bout

About Bout

As Andean leaders head for a summit dominated by the stridently anti-American gesture politics of Hugo Chavez, one of the real instigators of the current crisis is in police captivity:

[Viktor] Bout, charged in New York with conspiring to sell weapons worth millions of dollars to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, faces up to 10 years in jail if found guilty in Thailand.