A reputed Russian arms dealer will be extradited to the United States, an appeals court in Thailand decided Friday, overturning a lower court’s rejection of a U.S. extradition request and ending concern that the man dubbed the “merchant of death” would be set free.
The court set a three-month deadline to extradite Viktor Bout, who appeared in court shackled in leg irons, the Associated Press reported. He cried upon hearing the verdict and hugged his wife and daughter.
“This is the most unfair decision possible,” his wife told reporters, speaking in Russian through an interpreter. “It is known the world over that this is a political case.”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called the extradition ruling an “unlawful, political decision” made “under very strong external pressure,” Reuters news agency reported. He said Moscow would continue to seek Bout’s return to Russia.
If convicted, Bout would face up to life in prison. Analysts said that if he cooperates with U.S. law enforcement and enters some type of plea agreement, Bout could provide the U.S. government with a significant store of intelligence about international arms smuggling.
The court decision followed stepped-up pressure on Thailand by the Obama administration and members of Congress amid worries that the Bangkok government might free Bout.
The State Department called in Thailand’s ambassador this week to tell him of U.S. concerns about the potential release. And six senior members of Congress — three Democrats and three Republicans — issued a letter to the Thai government Wednesday contending that if Bout is freed, he would sell arms to groups that seek to kill Americans.
“We find the potential release of a man responsible for countless deaths of innocents in Africa and elsewhere simply astounding,” wrote the lawmakers, who included Reps. Howard Berman (D-Calif.) and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), the chairman and ranking Republican, respectively, on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Bout, 43, was indicted in federal court in 2008 for allegedly conspiring to provide weapons to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC — which Washington has designated a foreign terrorist organization. The weapons were to be used, the indictment alleged, to kill Americans. Bout was subsequently indicted in January on separate charges of money laundering and sanctions busting in connection with gun-running activities to Afghanistan, Angola, Congo, Liberia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Sudan.
But Bout, through numerous transport companies he controlled, also worked for the United Nations in Sudan and at one point moved cargo for the United States into Iraq following the U.S. invasion of that country in 2003.
He was arrested in March 2008 by Thai police in a five-star Bangkok hotel after a sting operation in which he allegedly arranged to sell surface-to-air missiles to U.S. agents posing as FARC guerrillas. The United States chose to conduct the sting in Bangkok because of its long relationship with Thai law enforcement, and U.S. officials assumed that Bout would be quickly turned over.
However, Russia lobbied hard for Bout, who started his career as a Soviet military translator. Officials noted that, soon after Bout’s arrest, Russia and Thailand agreed on the sale of a batch of Mi-17 helicopters to the Thai military.
“The Russians have been very active diplomatically,” said a U.S. law enforcement official. “They have looked after one of their citizens and pushed the process very hard diplomatically.”
Last August, a Thai court refused to extradite Bout after the judge announced that the FARC was not a terrorist organization.
But in Friday’s ruling, the Thai appeals court rejected that logic and Russian allegations that the U.S. indictment was politically motivated.
“Given that the defendant was charged with conspiring to kill American citizens and American officers, conspiring to source . . . anti-aircraft missiles, and acquire weapons for a terrorist group like FARC — these are criminal offenses not just in the country where he is a plaintiff but also the country receiving the charges,” the ruling said.
“The court has decided that these charges have no political characteristic as the lower court ruled,” it said. “Therefore the appeals court disagrees with the verdict.”
The United States lost an earlier weapons-related extradition case in Thailand. In September 2008, a Thai court freed an Iranian army major, Jamshid Ghassemi, who was wanted in the United States for allegedly trying to buy missile guidance technology. Iran, too, lobbied the Thai government over that case and the court ultimately accepted the argument of the defense that Ghassemi, being a military officer, was just doing his job.
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