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For more than 15 years, Viktor Bout allegedly sold and run guns to just about every scumbag on the planet: the Taliban, Congolese rebels, Hezbollah extremists, Colombia’s FARC, Muammar Qaddafi, Mobutu Sese Seko. And for more than 15 years, it looked like this "Merchant of Death" would get away with it. He'd give interviews to the international press while investigators were on his tail. Even Bout's 2008 arrest in Thailand seemed like an escape. His wife told a local judge that Bout was only in South America for "tango lessons." The court agreed not to send Bout to the United States. One of the judges even said that “a Thai court cannot judge a case regarding aliens killing aliens outside of Thailand.”
All that may have changed today. "We are extremely pleased that the Appeals Court in Thailand has granted the extradition of Viktor Bout to the United States on charges of conspiring to sell weapons to a terrorist organization for use in killing Americans," Acting U.S. Deputy Attorney General Gary Grindler just announced in a statement.
Bout is talking tough. "We will face the trial in the United States and win it," Bout told reporters in Russian after the verdict, according to Russia's RIA Novosti news agency.
But there's a reason he and his wife has been fighting extradition for so long. Somehow, I don't think the tango defense is going to work over here.
Photo: via RIA Novosti
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