Notorious arms dealer Bout heading to US court

By Beth Kampschror

The news is cheering, since the last we heard of Bout – who was arrested in Thailand in early 2008 for allegedly trying to sell weapons to people he thought were Colombian rebels (they were actually DEA informants) – was after a Thai court rejected Bout’s extradition to the US last year. The court’s three-judge panel surprised many observers with its bizarre ruling: Rather than deciding a simple yes or no on the US’s extradition request, the court ruled that Bout’s case didn’t fall under Thai extradition rules. A Bout expert told us at the time that Russian money had bent the Thai judicial system; at least one weapons-trafficking watchdog was disappointed by that judgment. And rightly so. After Bout’s years of extra-legal activities, such as defying UN sanctions by flying weapons into African war zones, the DEA’s sting – which got Bout arrested for trying to sell 700 surface-to-air missiles to the FARC, a US-designated terrorist group – looked like just the thing to bring Bout to justice. When last year’s ruling raised the possibility that Bout could eventually end up back in Moscow, it was disheartening.

Last week’s ruling by a Thai appeals court overturned the earlier ruling, meaning that Bout could end up in the US within three months. Bout, looking much slimmer than when he’d first entered the Thai prison, seemed confident that he would be exonerated:

“We will go to court in America and we will win,” Mr. Bout told a reporter from Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency after a Thai court ordered the extradition.

Russian authorities indicated they were less interested in Bout having his day in a US court:

“We regret what, in my view, is an illegal political decision taken by the appellate court in Thailand,” Sergey V. Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, said Friday, according to the Interfax news agency. “Based on the information we have at our disposal, the decision was made under very strong outside pressure. This is lamentable.”

He vowed to do everything necessary to ensure Mr. Bout’s return to Russia.

Why does the Russian government care? Because Bout created his empire with the approval of the Kremlin, and he knows a lot about what his government has been up to in various hot spots around the world, wrote Bout expert Douglas Farah last week:

And as Vladimir Putin consolidated the badly fractured intelligence services again over the past several years, Bout was less a rogue agent and more a part of the rapidly expanding Russian arms network. No longer free to operate on his own, he was spotted by European intelligence services in Iran in 2005 and Lebanon in 2006, allegedly delivering Russian weapons used by Hezbollah in the war with Israel that summer.

If the extradition goes through (and under Thai law there are no further appeals allowed), what could Bout offer if he opted for a plea bargain? He could likely tell a great deal about the Russian-led networks that continue to arm jihadi movements in Somalia and Yemen. He also likely knows how the Russian military intelligence and arms structure works, including its interests from Iran to Venezuela and elsewhere. His knowledge base, although he is only 43 years old, goes back more than two decades and possibly extends to the heart of the Russian campaigns around the globe.

It might be that same fear that prompted this absurd coverage from Kremlin mouthpiece Russia Today. (For those who can’t see the video, RT interviews an “author and publisher” who asserts that this case is nothing more than American business interests trying to boot Bout out of Africa because he’s monopolized all the oil and gold there. As for the credibility of this source, he’s published books about the 9/11 mystery plane and the Bavarian Illuminati, and publicized at least one book on conspiracyarchive.com.)

At any rate, the Russian authorities and their friends at RT needn’t worry: Farah’s takeaway is this:

It is unlikely (Bout) will turn on his Russian handlers. They have his wife and children, and despite his amoral sales record, he is widely known to be a family man. He endured more than two years in a Thai prison, losing more than 70 pounds and never showing any signs of doubting he would ultimately walk away. He has been, so far, a soldier's soldier. But if he turned, the stories he could tell would make the Kremlin wish it had kept an even closer eye on him.

Pink Panther suspect extradited to Japan

In other international news last week, Spanish authorities handed to their Japanese counterparts  a Montenegrin wanted for a 2007 jewelry store robbery in Tokyo. Rifat Hadziahmetovic, 42, is thought to be a member of the Pink Panthers jewelry thieves’ gang and faces trial in Japan for allegedly stealing a $2 million diamond tiara and other pieces. Here’s the Guardian on Hadziahmetovic’s international life of alleged crime:

Hadziahmetovic, from Podogorica in Montenegro, was arrested in Cyprus last year on a separate charge of trying to leave the island using a fake passport. He was later extradited to Spain over a 2008 robbery in Tenerife…

Hadziahmetovic is suspected of participating in armed robberies in Bahrain, Japan and the United Arab Emirates.

In Europe, the police-cooperation agency Europol warned earlier this month that organized crime groups are already involved in supplying energy to and within the 27-nation European Union. With that in mind, the agency forecast some scenarios that might take place if today’s trends –murky contracting for Russian gas, groups practicing VAT fraud on carbon trades, EU states balking at police cooperation, for example – continue. From Europol:

Natural resources, environmental impact and security in the EU are now inextricably linked and this demands analysis which goes beyond traditional threat assessments. Some of the threatening scenarios identified in the report include the following:

- Organised crime groups see energy as a safe long-term investment. They play the markets for short-term opportunities, profit from price/tax differences and use the energy sector to progress further towards respectability by their involvement in this legitimate business sector.

- Well-funded organised crime groups enjoy more power and receive more social acceptance as a result of a lack of cooperation between EU Member States.

- If regulation becomes king, there will be more rules to break. This will give more opportunities for organised crime to provide solutions, restricted commodities and cheaper alternatives.

The full report can be found here.

Serbian official: Saric investigation will be interesting

And speaking of criminals’ collusion with state structures, Viktor Bout is not the only transnational crook who had the help of his government, according to a Serbian justice official. Darko Saric, a fugitive wanted for allegedly attempting to smuggle more than two tons of cocaine from South American to the Balkans last year, was probably also in league with local authorities, said Justice Ministry State Secretary Slobodan Homen last week.

"With Šarić, we're talking big mafia of a trans-national nature, that attempted to legalize cocaine money via the economy," said Homen.

"They could not have done that without the help from state structures in several countries. The investigation will include some people from the business community, as well as politicians, but it's best not to prejudice things. What is certain is that the investigation will include some interesting persons," the Serbian justice ministry official was quoted as saying.