'Merchant of Death' escapes arms charges
Police in Thailand have mysteriously dropped all charges against one of the world’s biggest arms dealers dubbed “The Merchant of Death”.
Officials said they would instead continue with extradition hearings brought by the United States against Viktor Bout.
Bout, a 41-year-old Russian, faces several charges in the US of arranging to sell weapons, including shoulder-launched missiles, to the Colombia rebel group FARC.
Thai police chief Phongphan Chayaphan said Bout would remain detained pending extradition hearings, which he estimated would take 60 days.
Bout’s lawyer said he would fight extradition.
Bout was arrested on March 6 at a Bangkok hotel after a sting operation in which undercover US agents pretended to be arms buyers from the Colombian rebels.
He could face 15 years in prison on the US charge. Thai authorities had held him on a charge of using the country as a base to negotiate a weapons deal with terrorists, for which he could have been imprisoned for 10 years.
Regarded as one of the world’s most wanted arms traffickers, Bout’s alleged list of customers since the early 1990s includes African dictators and warlords, including former Liberian President Charles Taylor, Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi and both sides of the civil war in Angola. In the process, he has been accused of breaking several UN arms embargoes.
Bout, who was purportedly the model for the arms dealer portrayed by Nicolas Cage in the 2005 movie “Lord of War,” has denied the current allegations against him and any criminal activities in the past.
Bout’s lawyer said the US charges were political and did not represent a criminal case because the Colombian government is fighting the FARC rebels over differences of ideology. He also said the conflict in Colombia is outside US jurisdiction.
Extradition treaties between nations generally do not allow turning over suspects in cases of a political nature.
