Viktor Bout Indicted for Conspiracy to Kill Americans & Related Terrorism Charges
By Andrew Cochran
The U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York and the Acting Administrator of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration announced the unsealing of an indictment against international arms dealer Viktor Bout for conspiring to sell millions of dollars worth of weapons to the FARC to be used to kill Americans in Colombia. The indictment, issued in March but sealed until today (download it here), supercedes the original complaint against Bout when he was arrested in Thailand on March 6. Bout is still in jail in Thailand pending extradition to the U.S, which the Russian government has intervened to halt. Quoting the press release:
"Between November 2007 and March 2008, Bout agreed to sell to the FARC millions of dollars’ worth of weapons -- including surface-to-air missile systems (SAMs), armor piercing rocket launchers, AK-47 firearms, millions of rounds of ammunition, Russian spare parts for rifles, anti-personnel land mines, C-4 plastic explosives, night-vision equipment, “ultralight” airplanes that could be outfitted with grenade launchers and missiles, and unmanned aerial vehicles. Bout agreed to sell the weapons to two confidential sources working with the DEA (the CSs), who represented that they were acquiring these weapons for the FARC, with the specific understanding that the weapons were to be used to attack United States helicopters in Colombia."
You can access our numerous posts about Viktor Bout
on this special search page. Almost all have been written by
Douglas Farah, who has personally
spent years of his life pursuing justice against Bout for his murderous arms dealing and assistance to terrorists. Doug and Stephen Braun of the
Los Angeles Times chronicled Bout's career in
The Merchant of Death, the best volume on the subject. Each step in the prosecution and eventual imprisonment of Bout is another tribute to Doug's and Steve's accuracy and persistence, often in the face of opposition by people who were in a position to make their lives very uncomfortable.
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