Dubai After being arrested in 2008 in Thailand following a sting operation, Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout was sentenced to 25 years imprisonment on Thursday by a New York court on charges of aiding terror.
Bout, 45, who was the subject of a 2007 book titled Merchant of Death by investigative journalists Douglas Farah and Stephen Braun, and on whose life the Nicholas Cage 2005 movie Lord of War was loosely based, asserted his innocence during the sentencing. He told the judge through a Russian interpreter, "I never intended to kill anyone. I never intended to sell arms to anyone. God knows this truth."
Speaking to Gulf News from London, Simon Mann, a former British mercenary who had been jailed in Zimbabwe and Equatorial Guinea on charges of planning to carry out a coup to topple Equatorial Guinea President Teodoro Obiang's regime in 2004, said that he felt a bit sorry for Bout.
No involvement
"I don't know him. He roamed around the world for years, and was also involved in running arms to the Unita rebels in Angola, against whom my [now defunct] company Executive Outcomes was fighting [alongside Angolan government troops]. I never did any business with him, as our company was not involved in arms procurement in Angola."
Mann claimed that while he was being interrogated in Equatorial Guinea in 2008, Bout was being questioned in Thailand by the authorities.
"I learnt that he claimed he knew me. I think he was saying this just to increase his own importance with the authorities. I spent half a day trying to convince my interrogators in Equatorial Guinea that what Bout said was totally untrue."
Arrested in Bangkok in 2008 after he agreed to sell weapons to undercover US Drug Enforcement Administration agents who posed as commanders of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc), Bout was extradited to US and was tried by a federal court in New York.
The three-week trial centred on charges he agreed to sell arms to people he thought were Colombian militants intent on attacking American soldiers.
According to prosecutors, in a meeting at a Bangkok hotel with the supposed FARC representatives, Bout agreed to sell them 100 advanced man-portable surface-to-air missiles, approximately 5,000 AK-47 assault rifles and explosives.
Bout was charged only in connection with the suspected arms deal, but US authorities have said he has been involved in trafficking arms since the 1990s to dictators and conflict zones in Africa, South America, Afghanistan and the Middle East.
Bout's lawyers have said they would appeal.
Defence attorney Albert Dayan argued on Thursday that the government's case was based entirely on Bout's promises, rather than his actions, and therefore had "built-in reasonable doubt".
Politically motivated
Meanwhile, Russia said the "groundless and biased" ruling was politically motivated. The Foreign Ministry said Russia would continue to seek Bout's return to his country.
"The American judicial system, carrying out an obvious political order, ignored the arguments of the defence lawyers," a ministry statement said.
While there have been allegations that Bout could not have operated so freely without high-level protection from Russian authorities, Mann seemed to disagree. "I am not sure the Russians supported him. I have met several Russian officials while doing deals for the Angolan government. I never felt they supported him."
— With additional inputs from Reuters
