Yaroshenko is a criminal, but Bout is a much bigger fish. Bout’s real-life exploits are actually more unbelievable than the movie loosely based on his life, the 2005 Nicolas Cage film
Lord of War.
Nicknamed the “Merchant of Death,” Bout is a
flamboyant arms dealer in his mid-50s with Russian military training. He became a billionaire by raiding the armories of the collapsing Soviet Union in the early 90s and using old Soviet cargo planes to transport his black-market weapons to conflict zones around the world.
Viktor Bout, center, is led by armed Thai police commandoes as he arrives at the criminal court in Bangkok, Thailand, Tuesday, Oct. 5, 2010. (AP Photo/Apichart Weerawong)
Bout’s criminal genius has been hailed by every international law enforcement agency that went after him. He was smart enough to mix his weapons shipments with more legitimate cargoes, posturing as a humanitarian who just wanted to sell cheap food to starving Africans. Meanwhile, he was selling guns to every bad actor from al-Qaeda and Hezbollah, to both the Taliban and its enemies in Afghanistan.
Bout was
bagged in Thailand in 2008 while trying to sell weapons to Colombian terrorists who were actually CIA agents in disguise. He was not just selling his murderous Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) customers a few pistols — the deal
included “800 surface-to-air missiles (SAMs), 30,000 AK-47 firearms, 10 million rounds of ammunition, five tons of C-4 plastic explosives, ‘ultralight’ airplanes outfitted with grenade launchers and unmanned aerial vehicles.”
“As the evidence at trial showed, Viktor Bout was ready to sell a weapons arsenal that would be the envy of some small countries. He aimed to sell those weapons to terrorists for the purpose of killing Americans. With today’s swift verdict, justice has been done and a very dangerous man will be behind bars,” then-U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Preet Bharara said after Bout’s 2011 conviction.
The U.S. government’s
charges against Bout included “conspiracy to kill United States nationals, conspiracy to kill officers and employers of the United States, conspiracy to acquire and use anti-aircraft missiles and conspiracy to provide material support and resources to a foreign terrorist organisation.”
Bout made it clear to the undercover CIA operatives who arrested him that he understood his weapons would be used to kill Americans in Colombia.
“We have the same enemy,” he told the ersatz FARC terrorists, boasting that he had been fighting the United States for the past “ten to fifteen years.”
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