Viktor Bout Flys On (Again)
By Douglas Farah
Thanks to the Yorkshire Ranter, we now know that Viktor Bout's planes, including the banned IRBIS Air Co., placed on the Treasury Department's OFAC list of banned companies, continues to fly regularly to the U.S.-operated Bagram air base in Afghanistan. For his details, you can visit here, and for a comprehensive list of Bout companies still operating in the region, which the Ranter has identified, go here. It is now beyond belief that a man who sold and maintained aircraft for the Taliban, flew for Muslim extremists in Bosnia, few hundreds of tons of weapons to the most brutal and illegal armies of Africa, can still pull this off. Did the OFAC action mean nothing? (Apparently not)! What are people thinking? And shouldn't it be illegal to hire banned air craft companies, which then entails paying money to a person whose assets are supposedly frozen and is unable to receive money from ANY U.S. source? It is, as Alice said in Wonderland, getting curiouser and couriouser. The more Bout companies are identified and outed, the less enforcement action is taken. Can he be that valuable an asset to the intelligence community that he simply cannot be closed down, under any circumstances?
On another truely bizzare note the Ranter mentioned, and I had gotten from aviation authorities, all the Iraqi Airways aircraft are registered in Sierra Leone. What did THAT happen? For more on this, see my blog.
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» What are they thinking? from What Attitude Problem?
This utterly amazing post from the Counterterrorism Blog leaves me shaking my head and staring at the computer screen. Isn't anyone paying attention? As Douglas Farah queries: What are people thinking?Thanks to the Yorkshire Ranter, we now know that Vi... [Read More]
» What are they thinking? from What Attitude Problem?
This utterly amazing post from the Counterterrorism Blog leaves me shaking my head and staring at the computer screen. Isn't anyone paying attention? As Douglas Farah queries: What are people thinking?Thanks to the Yorkshire Ranter, we now know that Vi... [Read More]
