NEW YORK – An accused Russian arms dealer jumped at the chance to sell a military arsenal to Colombian militants, according to a US prosecutor, but his lawyers argue that he played along with the sting by US authorities for money and never intending to provide the weapons.
Viktor Bout, a former Soviet air force officer who was the subject of a book titled Merchant of Death, was arrested in Bangkok in 2008 after a US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) sting operation and extradited to New York in November last year.
Facing charges that include conspiracy to kill US nationals and conspiracy to provide help to a terrorist group, his trial in Manhattan federal court opened yesterday. He faces 25 years to life in prison if convicted.
“He showed that he was all in and knew exactly what he was doing,” assistant US attorney Brendan McGuire told the 15 jurors. Mr Bout agreed without hesitation to “a weapons deal designed to kill Americans”, Mr McGuire added.
In the DEA operation, US informants posed as arms buyers from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as Farc.
They approached Mr Bout seeking to buy an arsenal of military weaponry, which prosecutors said he agreed to provide.
Key to the operation, prosecutors said, was that the informants told Mr Bout at meetings in Bangkok that the weapons would be used to attack US pilots assisting the Colombian government, to which he responded: “We have the same enemy.”
Washington classifies the Farc, a Marxist-inspired guerrilla army, as a terrorist organisation and says it is deeply involved in the cocaine trade.
Albert Dayan, defending, said Mr Bout was never willing the sell the 199 advanced portable surface-to-air missiles or the approximately 5,000 AK-47 assault rifles that were discussed. Instead, he was never convinced the men were real Farc representatives, but played along in order to sell cargo aircraft.
“Viktor was baiting them along with the promise of arms hoping just to sell his planes,” Mr Dayan said. He also disputed that Mr Bout had backed Farc plans to attack Americans. “Viktor never walked into that meeting saying, ‘Hey, I want to kill Americans’.”
– (Reuters)