*Source: DTN News / Int'l Media
(NSI News Source Info) BANGKOK, Thailand - August 11, 2009: Viktor Bout, the alleged Russian arms dealer dubbed the "Merchant of Death", is due Tuesday to hear the result of his drawn-out fight against extradition from Thailand to the United States. 
Surrounded by security guards, alleged Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, center, is escorted to a criminal courtroom in Bangkok, Thailand Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2009. A Thai court Tuesday rejected a U.S. request to extradite Bout dubbed the "Merchant of Death," dealing a setback to American efforts to try him on charges of plotting to supply arms to Colombian rebels.
A Bangkok court is set to rule on a request from Washington to extradite the 42-year-old former Soviet air force pilot, who is said to have inspired the Hollywood film "Lord of War" starring Nicolas Cage.
The burly, moustachioed Bout was arrested in a sting operation at a hotel in the Thai capital in March 2008 on charges that he peddled weapons, including to Al-Qaeda, that were used in some of the world's most violent conflicts.
Bout, who has since been held at a maximum-security prison outside Bangkok, has denied the charges and insists that he ran a legitimate air cargo business.
"I never supplied arms and especially never had any deal with Al-Qaeda," Bout, who speaks six languages and is known by eight different aliases, said in a rare prison interview with British television earlier this year.
Bout was born in the Tajikistan capital Dushanbe in 1967 and studied several languages -- including English, French and Portuguese -- at Moscow's military institute for foreign languages before joining the Soviet air force.
He has repeatedly denied suggestions that he was a former KGB agent, but the fall of the Soviet Union allowed Bout to buy weaponry, aircraft and helicopters at throwaway rates and supply them to conflict zones.
The planes and helicopters as well as the crew manning them were hardy, low maintenance and above all very cheap.
Former British foreign office minister Peter Hain dubbed him the "Merchant of Death" and rights watchdog Amnesty International has alleged that at one time he operated a fleet of more than 50 planes ferrying weapons around Africa.
The British press has also linked him to Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network and to Afghanistan's extremist Taliban movement. Bout is also suspected of smuggling arms to former Liberian president Charles Taylor, who was subject to an UN arms embargo.
He was nabbed in a sting operation at a five-star Bangkok hotel after allegedly agreeing to supply surface-to-air missiles to US agents posing as guerrillas from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
Bout faces life in prison if sent to the United States and convicted there on terrorism charges, including conspiracy to kill US officers or employees and conspiracy to acquire and use an anti-aircraft missile.
Journalist Douglas Farah, who co-authored a book on Bout, has called him "a unique creature" born of the end of Communism and the rise of unbridled capitalism when the Berlin Wall came down in the early 1990s.
"He saw ... abandoned aircraft on the runways from Moscow to Kiev, no longer able to fly because of lack of money for fuel or maintenance; huge stores of surplus weapons that were guarded by guards suddenly receiving little or no salary; and the booming demand for those weapons from traditional Soviet clients and newly emerging armed groups from Africa to the Philippines.
"He simply wedded the three things, taking aircraft for almost nothing, filling them with cheaply purchased weapons from the arsenals, and flying them to clients who could pay," Farah said.
Bout, also known as "Boris" and "Vadim Markovich Aminov" among several other pseudonyms, has kept a high profile since his arrest, aided by an impassioned appearance by his wife at an extradition hearing earlier this year.
"He became a celebrity in a sense because of NGOs and UN reporting about him," Alex Vines, head of the Africa programme at Britain's Royal Institute of International Affairs, told AFP.
"He became the brand name for sanction-busting, but there are plenty of others who can offer the same services. It contributed to his problems, that he was a brand to be recognized," he said.
Surrounded by security guards, alleged Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, center, is escorted to a criminal courtroom in Bangkok, Thailand Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2009. A Thai court Tuesday rejected a U.S. request to extradite Bout dubbed the "Merchant of Death," dealing a setback to American efforts to try him on charges of plotting to supply arms to Colombian rebels.
A Bangkok court is set to rule on a request from Washington to extradite the 42-year-old former Soviet air force pilot, who is said to have inspired the Hollywood film "Lord of War" starring Nicolas Cage.
The burly, moustachioed Bout was arrested in a sting operation at a hotel in the Thai capital in March 2008 on charges that he peddled weapons, including to Al-Qaeda, that were used in some of the world's most violent conflicts.
Bout, who has since been held at a maximum-security prison outside Bangkok, has denied the charges and insists that he ran a legitimate air cargo business.
"I never supplied arms and especially never had any deal with Al-Qaeda," Bout, who speaks six languages and is known by eight different aliases, said in a rare prison interview with British television earlier this year.
Bout was born in the Tajikistan capital Dushanbe in 1967 and studied several languages -- including English, French and Portuguese -- at Moscow's military institute for foreign languages before joining the Soviet air force.
He has repeatedly denied suggestions that he was a former KGB agent, but the fall of the Soviet Union allowed Bout to buy weaponry, aircraft and helicopters at throwaway rates and supply them to conflict zones.
The planes and helicopters as well as the crew manning them were hardy, low maintenance and above all very cheap.
Former British foreign office minister Peter Hain dubbed him the "Merchant of Death" and rights watchdog Amnesty International has alleged that at one time he operated a fleet of more than 50 planes ferrying weapons around Africa.
The British press has also linked him to Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network and to Afghanistan's extremist Taliban movement. Bout is also suspected of smuggling arms to former Liberian president Charles Taylor, who was subject to an UN arms embargo.
He was nabbed in a sting operation at a five-star Bangkok hotel after allegedly agreeing to supply surface-to-air missiles to US agents posing as guerrillas from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
Bout faces life in prison if sent to the United States and convicted there on terrorism charges, including conspiracy to kill US officers or employees and conspiracy to acquire and use an anti-aircraft missile.
Journalist Douglas Farah, who co-authored a book on Bout, has called him "a unique creature" born of the end of Communism and the rise of unbridled capitalism when the Berlin Wall came down in the early 1990s.
"He saw ... abandoned aircraft on the runways from Moscow to Kiev, no longer able to fly because of lack of money for fuel or maintenance; huge stores of surplus weapons that were guarded by guards suddenly receiving little or no salary; and the booming demand for those weapons from traditional Soviet clients and newly emerging armed groups from Africa to the Philippines.
"He simply wedded the three things, taking aircraft for almost nothing, filling them with cheaply purchased weapons from the arsenals, and flying them to clients who could pay," Farah said.
Bout, also known as "Boris" and "Vadim Markovich Aminov" among several other pseudonyms, has kept a high profile since his arrest, aided by an impassioned appearance by his wife at an extradition hearing earlier this year.
"He became a celebrity in a sense because of NGOs and UN reporting about him," Alex Vines, head of the Africa programme at Britain's Royal Institute of International Affairs, told AFP.
"He became the brand name for sanction-busting, but there are plenty of others who can offer the same services. It contributed to his problems, that he was a brand to be recognized," he said.
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