Missiles, tango and a film with Nicolas Cage: who is Viktor Bout, the Russian arms dealer who swapped the United States

The Russian arms dealer Victor Bout, who was traded for American basketball player Brittney Griner on Thursday, is widely known overseas as the “Merchant of death” which has fueled some of the worst conflicts around the world.

In Russia, however, he is considered a fearless businessman who was unjustly imprisoned after an overly aggressive US covert operation.

the 2005 movie “Warlord” (The Warlord, in Spanish), starring Nicolas Cage, it was loosely based on Bout, a former Soviet Air Force officer who became famous for allegedly supplying weapons for civil wars in South America, the Middle East and Africa. His clients were said to include former Liberian president Charles Taylor, the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and both sides in the Angolan Civil War.

Some media in the Middle East claim that he was an arms dealer for the network Al Qaeda and the movement Taliban. His contacts in Afghanistan were even instrumental in saving the lives of several Russian citizens in 1995, when he participated in talks to free the crew of a hijacked Il-76 plane in that country.

Bout, who began his aviation career in the 1990s, built his business using military aircraft that had sat idle at airports after the fall of the Soviet Union. He went on to own 16 airlines on four continents, and for more than a decade his planes violated Africa daily and Colombia every two days.

Though part of a bloody affair, the 55-year-old was a vegetarian, a fan of classical music and is said to speak six languages, as well as several African languages. Even the origin of him is a mystery since then he had dozens of passports and aliases. He claimed in an interview that he was born in Turkmenistan, although intelligence reports state that he is actually Ukrainian.

Bout fell in March 2008 in a sting operation in Bangkok. US agents posed as Colombian guerrillas interested in buying weapons with which they planned to attack US soldiers.

The Thai authorities extradited him to the United States in November 2010 and in 2011 the court sentenced him to 25 years in prison on terrorism charges. Prosecutors said it was on the verge of selling up to $20 million worth of weapons, including surface-to-air missiles, to Colombia’s FARC, which the State Department classified as a terrorist group.

However, during the extradition process, his wife, Alla Bout, ensured that the convict’s only connection with South America was his love for tango. The woman, in fact, specified that her husband went to South America with the intention of following dance classes, and not of trafficking weapons.

A “hunting trophy”

“It’s a lie,” Bout yelled after hearing the allegations against him during his trial. Over the years he has always defended his innocence, denied his relationship with guns and described himself as a businessman.

“I’m like a hunted deer that they killed and now … they want a picture like I’m a wild animal, and now they’ve caught me and they’re going to put me in their kitchen and show their kids and their grandkids and they’re like, ‘Oh, that hunted animal'”declared after being extradited.

Bout has always had the backing of Russia, which at the time questioned her extradition and described her as a “trophy hunt” by the United States. Last August, Moscow acknowledged its interest in recovering Bout in a prisoner exchange with the United States, which has finally materialized in the last few hours.

Exchange after several months of negotiation

After more than a decade in prison in the United States, Bout returned to Russia on Thursday in an exchange with American basketball star Brittney Griner, who was detained for nine months in Moscow after a liquid containing cannabis was found on her.

The exchange took place on Thursday at the airport Abu Dhabias reported by the Russian Foreign Ministry on Telegram.

The United States also intended to include another citizen detained in Russia, former military officer Paul Whelan, in the exchange, although it ultimately did not materialize.

Several prisoner exchanges have taken place in the past. In April, former US Marine Trevor Reed, sentenced to nine years in prison in Russia for acts of violence he denied, was swapped for a Russian pilot, Konstantin Yaroshenko, who has been incarcerated in the US since 2010 on trafficking charges of drugs in relation to the Colombian FARC. .