Russian arms trafficking suspect Viktor Bout was flown from Bangkok to suburban New York on Tuesday in a chartered U.S. plane, extradited in manacles despite a final outraged push by Russian diplomats to persuade Thailand to release him, a U.S. law enforcement official said.
Bout arrived late Tuesday night at the Stewart Air National Guard Base in Newburgh, said the official, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because of security concerns.
Bout's extradition followed a bruising diplomatic tug-of-war between the U.S. and Russia that shows no sign of letting up and could jeopardize cooperation on arms control, nuclear weapons curbs and the war in Afghanistan.
Bout, a former Soviet air force officer who is reputed to have been one of the world's most prolific arms dealers, was arrested at a Bangkok luxury hotel in March 2008 as part of a sting operation led by U.S. agents.
Bout has allegedly supplied weapons that fueled civil wars in South America, the Middle East and Africa, with clients including Liberia's Charles Taylor and Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi and both sides in Angola's civil war.
I consider this the result of unprecedented political pressure on the judicial system and government of Thailand.
The head of a lucrative air transport empire, Bout had long evaded U.N. and U.S. sanctions aimed at blocking his financial activities and restricting his travel. He claims he ran a legitimate business and never sold weapons, and he fought hard to avoid extradition.
Thailand's government ordered Bout, 43, placed in American custody Tuesday, 20 months after his March 2008 arrest in a sting operation led by U.S. narcotics agents. Since then, the wealthy businessman -- estimated by the U.S. to be worth $6 billion -- had been in a Thai jail.
Bout was to be transported from Newburgh, about 60 miles north of New York City, to downtown Manhattan's Metropolitan Correctional Center, a federal facility that has housed the likes of Wall Street swindler Bernard Madoff, Gambino crime family scion John "Junior" Gotti and blind sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, who was sentenced to life in prison for plotting to blow up five New York landmarks and assassinate Egypt's president.
Russia described the extradition as "unlawful."
"I consider this the result of unprecedented political pressure on the judicial system and government of Thailand," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Russian television.
He said Bout is just a businessman and the Foreign Ministry will "take all necessary measures" to protect his legal rights in accordance with international humanitarian law.
State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said Bout's extradition was fully consistent with international law and he didn't expect the case to hurt U.S.-Russian ties. "We agree to disagree sometimes. We have tensions that crop up periodically and we work to manage those," he said. "I don't expect this will have any impact on our relationship."
Russia had made strong public statements warning against Bout's extradition, and privately, both Moscow and Washington were reported to be exerting heavy pressure on Abhisit's government. U.S lawmakers also became involved, sending a letter to the Thai government urging extradition.
The Russians may be worried about what Bout might say in open court in the U.S. Experts say he has knowledge of Russia's military and intelligence operations and that Moscow does not want him going on trial here.
"He clearly has a very deep network in and involving Russia," says Lee Wolosky, a New York lawyer and former White House counterterrorism official. "His aircraft were Russian, his arms for the most part that he delivered were Russian and he relied on a network of Russian official and semi-official sources and operations to really operate his own organization."
U.S. officials had also discovered that Bout's companies were helping U.S. subcontractors deliver supplies to Baghdad during the war. Wolosky said Bout ran a logistics operation larger than most nations have and was ready to work with anyone willing to buy -- including the Taliban.
"That’s what made him unique and that’s what made him quite dangerous to U.S. interests," Wolosky says.
Bout is said to have gotten his start in Africa where he found a market for abandoned Soviet weapons.
"We discovered at the National Security Council that he was supplying arms to virtually every conflict that President Clinton was trying to resolve in Africa," says Wolosky, who was on Clinton's staff when Bout's expanded business dealings first caught U.S. attention. "He was frequently supplying arms to both sides of those conflicts."
Bout expanded to other continents, and U.S. officials say he was caught when he was offering to sell weapons to DEA agents posing as members of the Colombian rebel group FARC. That is expected to be the basis of the case against him in New York.
The extradition came just a few days before a deadline that might have let him walk free. The same Thai court that last month gave the final go-ahead for his extradition also had declared that Bout had to be extradited before Nov. 20, or else be released.
Bout was taken from the prison where he had been held and was driven in a motorcade to the airport under high security. His wife, Alla, had rushed to the prison with his lawyer but did not get to see him.
A Thai court in August 2009 originally rejected Washington's request for Bout's extradition on terrorism-related charges. After that ruling was reversed by an appeals court in August this year, the U.S. moved to get him out quickly, sending a special plane to stand by.
However, just ahead of the appeals court ruling, the United States forwarded new money-laundering and wire fraud charges to Thailand in an attempt to keep Bout detained if the court ordered his release. But the move backfired and caused a new delay, and only an early October court ruling cleared the final path to extradition.
NPR's Michele Kelemen contributed to this report, which contains material from The Associated Press
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. 9(MDAzMjM2NDYzMDEyMzc1Njk5NjAxNzY3OQ001))
