CNN
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Freedom of Britney Griner Ultimately it depended on the release of the convicted Russian arms dealer. His story of life has inspired Hollywood films.
The US basketball star was released from Russian custody on Thursday in a prisoner exchange. Victor Boutdubbed “The Merchant of Death” by his accusers.
Victor BoutA former Soviet military officer, he is currently serving a 25-year prison sentence in the United States for conspiring to kill Americans, acquire and export anti-aircraft missiles, and provide material support to terrorist organizations. I’m here. Match claims he is innocent.
Kremlin He has repeatedly called for Bout’s release, denouncing his 2012 sentence as “unfounded and biased.”
Russia’s foreign ministry said on Thursday that the bouts had been returned to Russia after being exchanged at Abu Dhabi airport. Footage later shared by Russian state television showed Bout walking across the tarmac in Abu Dhabi, boarding and sitting on the plane, which later landed in Moscow.
“The Russian Federation has long been negotiating with the United States on the release of the VAbout,” the ministry said in a statement. [citizen] in an exchange scheme. Despite this, the Russian Federation continued to work actively to rescue its compatriots. ”
He added that Bout was “back home” as a result of negotiations with Russia and the United States.
Bout’s U.S. attorney, Steve Zissou, said Bout was with his wife and daughter. “After 15 long years, we are grateful that Viktor is finally reunited with her family,” he added.
Griner, who played offseason for the Russian women’s basketball team for years, was arrested in February on drug smuggling charges at an airport in the Moscow region. Nevertheless, she was sentenced to nine years in prison in early August and, after losing her appeal, was transferred to a Mordovian penal colony in mid-November.
The swap, confirmed Thursday by US President Joe Biden, did not include another American, Paul Whelan, whom the State Department declared unjustly detained. Whelan was arrested on espionage charges in 2018 and sentenced him to 16 years in prison in a trial that U.S. officials deemed unjust.
The Griner and Whelan families had asked the White House to secure their release, including through prisoner exchanges if necessary.
At the center of their bid was Bout, who had spent years dodging international arrest warrants and asset freezes.
On the same day, Griner testified in a Russian court as part of an ongoing drug trial after being arrested at a Moscow airport in February. Whelan was arrested on espionage charges in 2018 and sentenced him to 16 years in prison in a trial that U.S. officials deemed unjust.
The six-language-speaking Russian businessman was arrested in 2008 in a sting operation led by US drug agents in Thailand posing as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known by the acronym FARC. , eventually handed over to the United States in 2010.
“Viktor Bout has long been the number one international arms trafficker, arming some of the most violent conflicts around the world.” Convicted in New York in 2012.
“He was finally tried in an American court for agreeing to provide a staggering number of military weapons to a terrorist organization that professed to kill Americans.”
The trial focused on Bout’s role in supplying weapons to the FARC, a guerrilla group that rioted in Colombia until 2016. The US said the weapons were intended to kill US citizens.
But Bout’s history in the arms trade went much farther. He has been accused of fueling bloody conflicts since the 1990s, from Liberia to Sierra Leone to Afghanistan, and building fleets of cargo planes to transport military-grade weapons to conflict zones around the world. Due to allegations of human trafficking activities in Liberia, US authorities froze his US assets in 2004 and blocked all US transactions.
Bout has repeatedly claimed that he ran a legitimate business and acted merely as a logistics agent. He is believed to be in his 50s, but his age is unknown due to differences in passports and documents.
“His early years are a mystery,” says Douglas Farrar, a senior fellow at the International Center for Evaluation Strategy, who co-authored a book on Bout. told CNN in 2010.
Farah told Mother Jones Magazine in 2007 that Bout was born in 1967 in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, the son of a bookkeeper and an auto mechanic, according to his multiple passports. He said Bout graduated from the Military Institute of Foreign Languages, a well-known training school for Russia’s military intelligence service.
“He was a Soviet officer, perhaps a lieutenant, who simply saw the opportunities presented by the three factors with the collapse of the USSR and the accompanying state support: the runway from Moscow to Kyiv Abandoned aircraft could no longer fly due to lack of funds for fuel and maintenance.Huge stores of surplus weapons guarded by security guards suddenly lost their salaries. We’ve received little to no, and there’s been a surge in demand for these weapons from traditional Soviet customers and emerging armed groups from Africa to the Philippines,” Farrar told the magazine.
Bout says he worked as a military officer in Mozambique. Others say it was actually Angola where Russia had a large military presence at the time, Farrar told CNN. began his investigation in the early to mid-1990s, when the United States began to get involved.
Bout, who reportedly used names such as “Viktor Anatolyevich Bout”, “Victor Bhatt”, “Viktor Bhatt”, “Viktor Bulakin”, and “Vadim Markovich Aminov”, was born in 2005. Nicolas Cage in the movie “Lord of War”.
In 2002, CNN’s Jill Dougherty met with Bout in Moscow. She asked him about the allegations against him – did he sell weapons to the Taliban? Did he supply rebels in Africa and get rewarded with blood diamonds? – and he denied each claim.
“It’s a false claim and a lie,” he said. “I’ve never touched a diamond in my life. I’m not a diamond fanatic and I don’t want that business.”
“I’m not scared,” he told Doherty. “I haven’t done anything in my life to be afraid of.”
