Victor Bout extradited to the USA

[Cain]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11768684

Russia has described as a "blatant injustice" Thailand's decision to extradite alleged Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout to the US to face charges of conspiring to sell weapons.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said it was the result of unprecedented American pressure on Thailand.

Mr Bout was flown out of Bangkok after Thailand backed the US request after months of legal wrangling.

He was arrested in Bangkok in 2008 in a US-led operation.

The former Russian air force officer, 43, has been accused of trying to sell arms to Colombian rebels, and supplying weapons that fuelled conflicts in Africa and the Middle East.

If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of life in prison.

But he denies being, or ever having been, an arms dealer - and Moscow also insists he is innocent.

The 43-year-old is thought to have knowledge of Russia's military and intelligence operations, and Russian diplomats fear the revelations he might make in open court, correspondents say.

Question: why is Bout being extradited to the US especially?  What crime has he committed on US soil or in US jurisdiction?  I'm trying to think for one, but I'm struggling...

[The Good Reverend Roger]

We're the world's cop, doncha know.  Those little countries with the funny names can't manage themselves, so it's up to us.

[Cain]

I can see the US angle - they think Bout has intelligence - and Bout will probably be safer in US custody than the Colombians....unless this is about Bout's links to the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in 1999-2000.  In which case, they probably have a case for wanting him and he wont be any safer or better off.

[Disco Pickle]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11768684

Question: why is Bout being extradited to the US especially?  What crime has he committed on US soil or in US jurisdiction?  I'm trying to think for one, but I'm struggling...

There's precedent:

http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2008/June/08-nsd-533.html

NEW YORK- Michael J. Garcia, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and Michele M. Leonhart, the Acting Administrator of the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), announced that international arms dealer Monzer Al Kassar, a/k/a Abu Munawar, a/k/a El Taous, arrived in New York today after being extradited from Spain on federal terrorism charges. Al Kassar was extradited to New York for his participation in a conspiracy to sell millions of dollars worth of weapons to the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (the FARC) -- a designated foreign terrorist organization -- to be used to kill Americans in Colombia. Al Kassar's co-defendants, Tareq Mousa Al Ghazi and Luis Felipe Moreno Godoy, were both previously extradited to New York from Romania to face the same terrorism charges. According to the superseding Indictment filed in Manhattan federal court:

Since the early 1970s, Al Kassar has been a source of weapons and military equipment for armed factions engaged in violent conflicts around the world. Some of these factions have included known terrorist organizations, such as the Palestinian Liberation Front (PLF), the goals of which included attacking United States interests and United States nationals.

To carry out his weapons-trafficking business, Al Kassar developed an international network of criminal associates, including co-defendants Al Ghazi and Moreno Godoy, as well as front companies and bank accounts in various countries, including the United Kingdom, Spain, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Poland, Bulgaria, and Romania. Additionally, Al Kassar has engaged in money-laundering transactions in bank accounts throughout the world to disguise the illicit nature of his criminal proceeds.



Between February 2006 and May 2007, Al Kassar agreed to sell to the FARC millions of dollars worth of weapons, including thousands of machine guns, millions of rounds of ammunition, rocket-propelled grenade launchers (RPGs), and surface-to-air missile systems (SAMs). During a series of recorded telephone calls, e-mails, and in-person meetings, Al Kassar agreed to sell the weapons to two confidential sources working with the DEA (the CSs), who represented that they were acquiring these weapons for the FARC, with the specific understanding that the weapons were to be used to attack United States helicopters in Colombia.

During their consensually-recorded meetings, Al Kassar provided the CSs with, among other things: (1) a schematic of the vessel to be used to transport the weapons; (2) specifications for the SAMs he agreed to sell to the FARC; and (3) bank accounts in Spain and Lebanon that were ultimately used to receive and conceal more than $400,000 sent from DEA undercover accounts that the CSs represented were FARC drug proceeds for the weapons deal. During his meetings with the CSs, Al Kassar reviewed Nicaraguan end-user certificates that he accepted despite knowing that the arms were destined for the FARC in Colombia. Al Kassar also promised to provide the FARC with ton-quantities of C-4 explosives, as well as expert trainers from Lebanon to teach the FARC how to effectively use C-4 and improvised explosive devices (commonly referred to as IEDs). In addition, Al Kassar offered to send a thousand men to fight with the FARC against United States military officers in Colombia.

and this from 2002:

http://www.watsoninstitute.org/bjwa/archive/9.1/SmallArms/Austin.pdf

lot of info, but this is topical to the OP

Sadly, it was the 11 September attacks and their aftermath that magnified
the problematic but intimate connection between contraband arms pipelines,
mass killing, and terrorism. Even with its current war on terrorism, however,
the United States does not appear ready to apprehend Bout for illegal arms
brokering—even though several of Bout's companies are reportedly based in
both Florida and Texas and may have violated U.S. arms statues.4
Historically, arms brokers—the singularly important middlemen in the
arms trade—have been uniquely unregulated. Commonly nicknamed "merchants
of death," they include negotiators, financiers, exporters, importers, and transport
agents and have been used to arrange every aspect of an arms deal between the
supplier and an intended client.5 Their wares include big-ticket items such as
tanks and helicopters, but they trade more heavily in small arms and light
weapons including machine guns, rifles, pistols, grenades, landmines, and
ammunition. These intermediaries seldom own or even possess the arms supplies
outright, and typically reside neither in the country where the weapons are supplied
nor the one in which they are received.
The increasing privatization of warfare at the end of the Cold War—
coupled with the outbreak of internal wars—created new opportunities for these
arms trading entrepreneurs. Today, warlords, child soldiers, criminal organizations, human rights abusers, and tyrannical regimes—because of
their easy access to guns—are often the key players in internal wars that
can spill over borders and pose a direct threat to international peace and
human security. Roughly four million people have been killed with small
arms in these conflicts since 1991.6

The majority of these victims have been civilians—a striking contrast to military
casualties of an earlier era. The supporting cast of arms traffickers ensures that
the perpetrators of violence in these humanitarian tragedies have sufficient
firepower to pursue their deadly objectives.

it goes on to describe a 1996 law meant to give US law enforcement legal means to prosecute nationally for what could be considered international crimes, and to crack down on intranational dealing.

I say this looks like the culmination of probably the last decade worth of information gathering, as the law probably allowed the CIA and Feds justification to budget the manpower necessary to really investigate and begin to build a case.

He's likely just the first of many to come, but I expect to see other INTERPOL nations follow up and pick up some of his smaller chess pieces.

oh, and maybe not relevant to OP, but the US hates competition for weapon sales.  I imagine this has been in the works for some time.

[Cain]

Ah, that does explain a lot, thanks.

And yeah - generally the unspoken reason states crack down so hard on arms dealers is because they don't like independent contractors eating into their profits.  The Big Five on the UNSC are all major arms dealers with billions at stake, so that there is an international consensus against the likes of Bout shouldn't be too surprising.

[Chairman Risus]

I thought the impression was that Bout knows a bit about Russian intelligence, military or otherwise, that the US might be able to coerce out of him.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11768684

[Cain]

He may do.  It's hard to say.  The rumours were he worked Africa for the KGB, in the 80s, and maintained some of those relationships into the present, though for his personal profit.  The FSB may have used him as an agent, but if so they must be rather unhappy with the deals he cut with the Taliban, and with the Americans in 2003.  Russia have wanted the Al-Qaeda leadership dead a lot longer than the USA, and were opposed to the Iraq War.  That doesn't mean he wasn't an agent, or hasn't made amends since, but I doubt they welcomed him into their hearts and trusted him with much in the way of classified information.