5:19 AM
Hayashi
Viktor Bout, a former Soviet Air Force officer who became known as the “Merchant of Death” for running what American officials have described as an international arms trafficking network, was found guilty on Wednesday of conspiring to sell antiaircraft missiles and other weapons to men he believed were members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.
The verdict, in Federal District Court in Manhattan, was a rather prosaic end to nearly two decades spent in the margins of international terrorism and espionage; Mr. Bout has been accused of furnishing weapons to Al Qaeda and the Taliban and into civil wars in Africa, and was reputed to have a grasp on present-day Russian intelligence. His legend even inspired the 2005 film “Lord of War,” starring Nicolas Cage.
Even Mr. Bout’s arrest and extradition were theatrical: he was taken into custody in Bangkok in March 2008 after getting ensnared in a foreign sting operation run by the Drug Enforcement Administration; his extradition to the United States, which Russian officials strenuously opposed, took more than two and a half years.
But the trial, presided over by Judge Shira A. Scheindlin, took only three weeks, nearly all of it spent by prosecutors in making their case. Mr. Bout’s lawyer did not present any witnesses; the jury took less than two days to find Mr. Bout guilty of all four charges against him.
Mr. Bout, 44, faces a sentence of up to life in prison for conspiring to kill United States citizens, officers and employees by agreeing to sell weapons to drug enforcement informants who he believed were members of the Colombian terrorist organization known as the FARC; and for conspiring to acquire and export surface-to-air antiaircraft missiles, a conviction that carries a mandatory minimum of 25 years in prison.
Mr. Bout also faces a maximum of 15 years for conspiring to provide material support or resources in the form of weapons to a foreign terrorist organization. His sentencing is scheduled for Feb. 8.
The jury found that Mr. Bout believed that the men he and his associates had been communicating with for months were, as the prosecution stressed, “waging war” against the Colombian government and its American collaborators. In fact, the men who Mr. Bout and his former associate, Andrew Smulian, had been orchestrating a deal with were undercover Drug Enforcement Administration informants.
In the government’s final rebuttal of the defense’s closing argument, Brendan R. McGuire, a prosecutor, cited e-mail exchanges, text messages and recorded telephone conversations among Mr. Bout, Mr. Smulian and other associates, as well as Mr. Bout’s own Internet research into the FARC prior to his meeting with the informants in a Sofitel hotel in Bangkok, in March 2008.
Since his extradition, Mr. Bout has been held at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan.
“We are very disappointed about this verdict,” Mr. Bout’s lawyer, Albert Y. Dayan, said upon exiting the courthouse. “This is definitely not the end of the process for us,” he said, indicating that further legal actions were forthcoming.
Mr. Dayan said that Mr. Bout “believes that this is not the end,” and that they maintain that he was wrongfully accused.
Mr. McGuire told jurors that the evidence against Mr. Bout had been “overwhelming” and suggested that Mr. Bout’s lawyer had repeatedly tried to mold the truth in Mr. Bout’s favor.
Mr. Dayan had painted his client as an innocent and financially troubled businessman caught up in a desperate charade to sell nothing more than two cargo airplanes to men Mr. Bout was “skeptical” were actually members of the FARC. Mr. Bout’s promises of tens of thousands of AK-47 rifles, millions of rounds of ammunition, hundreds of missiles, ultralightweight airplanes and other military equipment was simply “a con,” Mr. Dayan told jurors.
Mr. Smulian, the former associate of Mr. Bout’s who began cooperating with United States authorities shortly after his arrest with Mr. Bout in Bangkok, suggested in his testimony that Mr. Dayan’s defense was completely erroneous. Plans had been set in motion, he said, for a lucrative, long-term relationship among him, Mr. Bout and the FARC that extended far beyond arms dealing and into military training, money laundering and even political support.Throughout the trial, prosecutors said they had needed to prove merely that such a “criminal agreement” had existed between Mr. Bout and Mr. Smulian, and that subsequent action or even an actual pact with the men posing as FARC was irrelevant.
Mr. Smulian, who pleaded guilty in 2008 to conspiring to sell arms with Mr. Bout, was among seven witnesses, including a Drug Enforcement Administration agent, a computer forensics expert and two undercover informants, who testified for the prosecution. Mr. Dayan criticized Mr. Smulian’s testimony as “a dog-and-pony show.” He said that Mr. Smulian — who had admitted in his testimony that he wished to get his sentence reduced for “substantial cooperation” with the government — was “a bad liar” who had masterminded the “fake FARC” deal, pushing it on Mr. Bout out of his own necessity for cash.
Mr. McGuire called Mr. Dayan’s defense strategy “a tap dance” that was “as dizzying as it is ridiculous.” He brushed aside Mr. Dayan’s core argument as mere assertion that withered in the face of what Mr. McGuire said was ultimately an “inconvenient truth” for Mr. Bout.
“He did everything to show them he could be a one-stop shop for the FARC,” Mr. McGuire said, underscoring Mr. Bout’s “numerous” incriminating actions during the sting operation. Mr. McGuire referred jurors to a recorded conversation from a meeting in Bangkok in which he said Mr. Bout had bragged to the supposed FARC members about the “5,000 weapons deliveries” he had executed in the past.
At the same time, Mr. McGuire applauded the investigation that led to Mr. Bout’s conviction by saying, “There was nothing political or improper” about it.
“It’s all over,” Mr. McGuire told jurors in his final rebuttal. “Viktor Bout is guilty of every count in the indictment.”
source : New York Times
