“Sanction Breaker,” “Death Merchant,” or even “Warlord.” During his rich career as an arms dealer and trafficker, Russian Viktor Bout, who on Thursday was traded with American basketball star Brittney Griner while serving a 25-year prison sentence on the other side of the Atlantic, has built a reputation that excite.
On many occasions, Moscow had expressed its wish that Viktor Bout return to its territory. He says that today’s 55-year-old, who began his long career as an officer in the Red Army in USSR times, has quite a resume.
The story begins with the fall of the communist bloc in the early 1990s, a period in which Russia would face an unprecedented economic and social crisis accompanied by an explosion of crime.
Formerly an officer in the Soviet air force, Viktor Bout manages to get hold of large stocks of weapons and aircraft at very low cost, particularly AK-47 machine guns, which he will sell to the four corners of the world and deliver via airlines he also owns.
Thus, in the 1990s, Bout was part of every war, conflict and armed revolution in Africa and Asia, from Sierra Leone to Afghanistan, not hesitating at times to sell his weapons to two opposing sides. le figaro He also recalls that Bout repeatedly manages to free countries still under embargo, earning him the nickname “sanctions breaker.”
Arrested in 2008
It is also during this period that the trafficker reaches the CIA’s radar, which will make him one of its priority targets. An objective that will not prevent it from providing logistical assistance to the United States in Afghanistan and Iraq, recalls the newspaper.
After almost 20 years of illegal activities, it was finally in 2008 that Viktor Bout was arrested in Bangkok, Thailand, during an operation carried out by the US anti-drug agency. To bring down the trafficker, the agents pose as his members of the Colombian FARC, considered a terrorist group by the United States, and reach an agreement with Bout for one hundred missiles. He was arrested a few days later.
Extradited to the United States Against the advice of Russia, which demands his release, he was sentenced to 25 years in prison and a fine of 15 million euros by the New York court.
“For the Russians, he is not considered a trafficker but a businessman, he is an oligarch who is part of the circle of action levers in Moscow. His arrest had something very humiliating for Moscow ”, General Jérôme Pellistrandi, defense, explains to our antenna. BFMTV consultant.
Posterity and popularity
Viktor Bout has also fallen into the collective imagination. It was he who inspired the character of Nicolas Cage in the film. Warlord from 2006.
“I am not the devil created by Hollywood. I am a small private carrier who worked where others did not go, ”he justified himself in an interview with the medium. figaro in 2010.
Last year his mother in an interview with the agency Ria Novosti, had requested his extradition, including his release. “I’m almost 85 years old, and if he still has to serve the other half of his prison term in the United States, I won’t be here,” she said. His wish was partially granted on Thursday.
Source: BFM TV
