He started with flowers, he became a millionaire with blood: Viktor Bout was perhaps the most feared arms dealer in the world and should actually remain behind bars for years to come. who was this man
You have to be happy for Brittney Griner, her friends and family. The US basketball player has been in Russian custody for a good ten months, now she is finally free - and yet there is a stale aftertaste. The Kremlin is only letting her go because it will get back someone who is incarcerated in the United States: arms dealer Viktor Bout. That the athlete who was caught with some hashish oil at Moscow airport is now, so to speak, on the same level as the unscrupulous "dealer of death" is ludicrous.
Because this man deserved to serve his sentence. When he was found guilty in New York in November 2011, he was sentenced to 25 years in prison. The verdict was announced the following April. After all, he has been through 11 since the guilty verdict - if you add the 3 years that he had previously been behind bars in Thailand and the USA, that's more than 14. Now he can be happy that it is not beneath the dignity of the Russian authorities was to take a harmless basketball player as a political hostage in order to free the arms dealer.
The former pilot had started his bloody career after the collapse of the Soviet Union. First he flew in cut flowers from Africa. But he soon realized that there was more money to be made with guns. Soviet-made Kalashnikovs were still coveted by sub-Saharan warlords and dictators. And so Bout used his connections. The soldiers guarding the old Soviet arms depots in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova were badly paid. For a bit of money, they both turned a blind eye while Bout had the guns loaded onto his Antonov cargo planes.
An unprecedented career took its course. Between 1992 and 1998 he is said to have stolen weapons worth around 20 billion euros from Ukraine alone. His clients were in Congo, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Angola - but he soon broadened his horizons. There was still the Taliban, but also the opposing Northern Alliance in Afghanistan and pretty much everyone else who paid. Al Qaeda? No problem. At least not before 2001. Even the US used his services for a time when they attacked Iraq in 2002. The United Nations described him as a kind of pioneer of a mafia-like globalization that deals with global trade, states and laws. Interpol was looking for him with an international arrest warrant.
Yet he had begun his adult life in a downright aesthetic way. Born in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, in 1967, he studied foreign languages in Moscow. He learned English, French and Portuguese and is said to have mastered a total of six foreign languages. As an interpreter, he was in Angola in the late 1980s, serving with Igor Sechin, who later made a career in intelligence and became a close confidant of Vladimir Putin. It could also be the connection to the Kremlin that protected Bout and his deals. He himself was an officer in the GRU military intelligence service. Eleven years ago it was speculated whether Bout would disclose his connections to the Kremlin. And if that was the reason why Moscow wanted him back so badly.
In the meantime, Bout is said to have employed 300 pilots who flew 50 machines. Rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, explosives or even helicopters and airplanes - Bout delivered. He became so notorious that Hollywood filmed his story, starring Nicolas Cage. Title of the 2005 strip: Naturally "Dealer of Death". For the shooting, the film crew chartered an Antonov - from the real Bout. Shortly thereafter he retired. What else should have come? He now enjoyed his wealth in a villa on the outskirts of Moscow.
Until this offer came in. FARC rebels from Colombia wanted surface-to-air missiles. At a meeting, they said they wanted to kill "a few Americans" and take US helicopters out of the sky. Bout beckoned one last big deal. He agreed. In March 2008 he met his business partners in Bangkok. But suddenly they put handcuffs on him. In truth, they were not Colombian terrorists, but US agents. And the now overweight Bout had fallen into their trap. It was three years before delivery, and the process began shortly thereafter.
Bout was not charged for supplying arms to warlords for 15 years. The indictment said he conspired to kill Americans and support a terrorist organization. That way he could be tried. Bout loudly denied that he intended to kill Americans. And dealing in arms. The jury found him guilty on all counts. The 25-year sentence he eventually got was the intended minimum. A $15 million fine was added. In a radio interview he compared himself to a "hunted deer". The deer can now leave its cage. The merchant of death returns home.
