http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5L60KqRZS4
Over a decade of gun-running for the world's nastiest regimes and terror groups has come to an end for Viktor Bout. The infamous mega-arms trafficker was convicted in a New York City court on Wednesday of providing material support to terrorists – with the intent to kill Americans. He could spend the rest of his life in jail.
There was practically no one Bout wouldn't sell weapons to. The Taliban, Hezbollah, Moammar Gadhafi, Zaire/Congo's Mobuto Sese Seko – all their repression and murder at one point relied on guns they bout from Bout, who swaggered about the world giving interviews that winked at his above-the-law impunity.
On Wednesday, that impunity ended. After Thailand extradited Bout to New York in November 2010 to stand trial on a variety of charges, a jury convicted him of conspiring to sell millions of dollars' worth of weapons to the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, better known as the FARC narco-guerrillas. Those weapons, the jury found, were intended to attack U.S. helicopters assisting in Colombian counternarcotics missions.
And they weren't just guns, either. Between November 2007 and March 2008, Bout agreed to sell the FARC five tons of C4, 800 surface-to-air missiles, "ultralight" airplanes tricked out with grenade launchers on them, and even unspecified drones. (Also, 30,000 AK-47s and 10 million rounds of ammo.) Minimum sentence: 15 years. Max: life.
"Today, one of the world’s most prolific arms dealers is being held accountable for his sordid past," Attorney General Eric Holder said in a statement. Sentencing is scheduled for February 8, 2012.
Bout was so infamous that Nic Cage played him in a (pretty good) movie based on his illicit exploits, Lord of War. Maybe the sequel will show Cage/Bout mopping commissary floors.
