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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Notorious arms dealer captured

Stephen Braun and Judy Pasternak Los Angeles Times

WASHINGTON – The long hunt for one of the world’s most notorious arms dealers climaxed Thursday in Bangkok, Thailand, where an eight-month undercover sting by a team of U.S. agents led to the capture and arrest of Russian businessman Viktor Bout in an alleged attempt to supply Colombian rebels with weapons and explosives.

Bout was taken into custody by Thai police authorities at a luxury hotel in Bangkok, where he was waiting to complete a weapons deal in which he expected to earn as much as $15 million for delivering surface-to-air missiles, attack helicopters and other weaponry, federal officials said.

U.S. authorities said they would move quickly to secure his extradition. But Bout’s controversial role in supplying the American military effort in Iraq and possible Russian interest in returning him to Moscow could complicate efforts to put him on trial in a New York courtroom, said former officials who had pursued him in recent years.

Bout was targeted in a high-stakes probe led by U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents that used informants to lure an associate of the Russian to meetings in Curacao, the Netherlands Antilles; Copenhagen, Denmark; and Bucharest, Romania, federal investigators said.

But the denouement came Thursday when Bout was baited into appearing at the Sofitel Silom hotel in Bangkok.

Bout’s global air transport empire has been linked to the arming of warlords and dictators in Africa, fanning the flames of civil wars throughout the 1990s. His companies helped arm the Taliban in Afghanistan before the Sept. 11 attacks, and also sold them a dozen cargo planes.

Then he managed to switch sides, aiding U.S. military reconstruction efforts in Iraq by staffing hundreds of supply flights to Baghdad.

Despite an indictment by Belgian authorities and investigations by American officials and UN arms experts, Bout has repeatedly eluded manhunts while building a global arms and air transport empire that stretched from Moscow to the Dallas suburbs.

In unsealing a criminal complaint against Bout and an accomplice, Michael J. Garcia, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said Thursday that American officials will press for Bout’s extradition. Bout faces charges of providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization.

The arrest of Bout, known by his pursuers as “the merchant of death,” is a milestone in the halting efforts by U.S., United Nations and other international authorities to take on the global arms trade and pursue suspected transnational criminals. His arrest “marks the end of the reign of one of the world’s most wanted arms traffickers,” Garcia said.

But Bout’s past role in aiding the Bush administration’s reconstruction effort in Iraq poses thorny hurdles to any effort to construct a legal case against him. A public trial, which would most likely proceed in the federal courthouse in Manhattan, could lead to uncomfortable revelations for the Bush administration – about Bout’s business relationships with U.S. military agencies and private contractors.

“An American trial would be interesting because a lot of the Bush engagement with Bout will come out,” said Witney A. Schneidman, a former assistant secretary of state who pressed for foreign support against Bout at the end of the Clinton administration.

The U.S. extradition push may be rivaled by a similar request from the Russian government. A Russian news agency reported Thursday that government officials in Moscow are mulling their own extradition request.