Thais arrest "Merchant of Death" arms dealer

Thu Mar 6, 2008 3:57pm EST

(Corrects spelling of Stephen in paragraph 13)

(Recasts with Bout charged in New York)

BANGKOK/NEW YORK, March 6 (Reuters) - Viktor Bout, an international arms dealer dubbed the "Merchant of Death," was arrested in Thailand and charged in New York on Thursday with trying to sell weapons to Colombian rebels, officials said.

Bout, the target of U.S. sanctions, was charged with conspiring to sell millions of dollars worth of weapons to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, U.S. Attorney Michael Garcia said in New York.

The United States, which has given billions of dollars in military aid to Colombia to fight the Marxist rebels and drug cartels, plans to pursue Bout's extradition from Thailand, officials said.

The FARC are fighting a four-decade-old insurgency against the Colombian government and are designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department.

The group is at the center of a diplomatic dispute that threatened to erupt into military conflict this week, after Colombia crossed the border into Ecuador to attack FARC rebels and kill one of their commanders on Saturday. Venezuela, an Ecuador ally and U.S. antagonist, leaped into the dispute, and the two countries sent additional troops to their borders with Colombia.

Bout's associate Andrew Smulian, 46, was charged on Thursday with conspiring to provide material support to a terrorist organization. Smulian's whereabouts where not immediately clear.

FORMER SOVIET OFFICER

A former Soviet air force officer born in Tajikistan in 1967, according to Russian media reports, Bout was picked up at a Bangkok hotel after entering Thailand on Feb. 29. Police were searching for an associate.

He was attempting "to procure weapons for Colombia's FARC rebels," Thai police said in an arrest report.

He has run a network of air cargo companies in the Middle East, Africa, Eastern Europe and the United States.

According to the United Nations and the U.S. Treasury Department, Bout has sold or brokered arms that have helped fuel wars in Afghanistan, Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Sudan.

The U.S. Treasury Department seized his cargo planes and froze other assets in 2006.

Bout has repeatedly denied the allegations.

Stephen Rapp, Chief Prosecutor at Sierra Leone's U.N.-backed war crimes court, welcomed the arrest: "It's very good news for justice and for international law enforcement."

He accused Bout of using his international network to smuggle arms through neighboring Liberia to fuel Sierra Leone's 1991-2002 civil war, which killed more than 50,000 people.

Rapp said Bout could be indicted by Sierra Leone's Special Court, which is currently due to close in 2009, if international donors came forward to provide funding.

"These kinds of cases need to be made against not just the politicians and the fighters, but the people who provide weapons of war," he said. "This is a great opportunity."

Rapp said Bout could also be a witness in the continuing trial of former Liberian president Charles Taylor in The Hague. Taylor is accused of crimes against humanity for his role in Sierra Leone's civil war. (Reporting by Nopporn Wong-Anan in Bangkok and Edith Honan in New York; additional reporting by Katrina Manson in Freetown; writing by Michelle Nichols, editing by Patricia Zengerle)




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