By Ken Dilanian —
NBC News
In actor Nicolas Cage's 2005 film
Lord of War,
the protagonist, inspired by Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, evades his US security forces pursuers, apparently saved by the CIA.
But in real life, the US government mounted an elaborate operation in 2008 to capture and prosecute Bout, nicknamed
The Merchant of Death
because he was said to be one of the world's biggest arms dealers.
He is now back in Russia after a prisoner exchange in which American basketball player Brittney Griner was released early on Thursday.
The long-rumored exchange had sparked a debate over whether the United States should give in to blackmail, given the disparity between the case of Bout, who was legally convicted of serious crimes, and that of Griner, who was held hostage by US authorities after his criminal conviction in Russia.
“I would agree to that exchange,” said Michael McFaul, a former US ambassador to Russia, speaking in July, well before the prisoner swap.
The alleged Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout in a detention center, in May 2009 in Bangkok, Thailand. Apichart Weerawong / AP
Under federal sentencing rules, Bout could have been released from prison in five years.
Bout, 55,
was sentenced to 25 years in federal prison in 2012 after being convicted of selling weapons to Colombian rebels,
which prosecutors say were intended to kill Americans.
The Russian regime had demanded his release ever since, claiming that he had been unfairly persecuted.
Following the sentencing, Attorney General Eric Holder called Bout
"one of the world's most prolific arms dealers,"
while Manhattan, New York, United States Attorney Preet Bharara said he had been
"enemy number one of international arms trafficking
for many years, fueling some of the most violent conflicts on the entire planet.”
Amnesty International claims that he sold weapons to sanctioned human rights violators in Angola, Liberia, Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
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Bout, an ex-Soviet soldier who became rich as an arms dealer, has always maintained his innocence.
Experts aren't sure why Moscow wanted him back so badly.
Some US government officials have said he
had links to Russian intelligence.
After years of persecution by the United States, the Drug Enforcement Administration caught Bout in an elaborate operation in which agents posed as Colombian rebels whom the United States had designated as a terrorist organization.
After consummating a large arms deal in a Bangkok hotel room, Bout said:
“The gringos are enemies
,” according to an account of the operation in a 2012 article in The New Yorker.
"For me, it's not business: it's my fight," he added.
Moments later, armed officers burst through the door and arrested him.
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His American lawyer, Steve Zissou, claims that the entire operation was unfair, because Bout was retired and lived in Moscow.
US District Judge Shira Scheindlin, who presided over the case, agreed.
"Had it not been for the approach made through this determined undercover operation, there is no reason to believe that Bout would ever have committed the crimes with which he is charged," she said at the sentence, in which she was imposed the mandatory minimum.
