STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- Russian convicted on all four counts; attorney says he will appeal
- The assistant U.S. attorney called the case against Bout "overwhelming"
- Bout was often referred to as one of world's most notorious arms traffickers.
- Bout tried to sell weapons to U.S. agents posing as Colombian rebels
New York (CNN) -- Convicted Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout could face life in prison after a federal jury returned guilty verdicts Wednesday on four counts related to a conspiracy to kill Americans, acquire and export anti-aircraft missiles and provide material support to a terrorist organization.
Bout's attorney, Albert Dayan, said the verdict will be appealed.
"I still stand by my position that Viktor was wrongfully accused," said Dayan. "The jury has spoken but his position is still that he's innocent."
Widely dubbed "the Merchant of Death," Bout was often referred to by U.S. and U.N. officials as among the most notorious of global arms traffickers.
Bout's lawyer: 'We intend to appeal' 
Bout guilty conspiring to kill Americans 
'Merchant of Death' on trial He had pleaded not guilty to all the charges.
Dayan said during the trial that the former Soviet air force officer was not involved in illegal arms sales, and that federal agents had baited Bout into selling the weapons alongside a deal to sell airplanes.
But Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney for Manhattan, called the Russian tycoon "a very dangerous man" in a statement Wednesday. "He aimed to sell those weapons to terrorists for the purpose of killing Americans."
Commentary: Three chilling moments from the trial
The heart of the case stemmed from a 2008 sting operation in Thailand by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency.
Undercover agents posing as Colombian rebels attempted to buy larges caches of weapons, according to a 2008 federal indictment.
Both the United States and the European Union identify the rebel group -- the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC -- as a terrorist organization.
The agents tried to purchase 700 to 800 surface-to-air missiles, thousands of AK-47s and landmines, telling Bout that they wanted the arms "to kill Americans," the indictment said.
Bout responded, it said, by saying he "was going to prepare everything the FARC needed."
During closing arguments Tuesday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Brendan McGuire called the evidence against Bout "overwhelming," pointing to alleged ties with various armed conflicts.
"He did everything he could to show that he could be a one-stop shop" for FARC, said McGuire.
Prior to his arrest, the DEA had struggled to draw Bout out of his Russian homeland, which is long thought to have sheltered and defended him.
Undercover agents met with Bout's associates the world over, from Curacao to Copenhagen, in an attempt to set up a meeting with their target, according to the indictment.
He was extradited to the United States in 2010 following his arrest and a protracted court proceeding in Thailand.
The Russian businessman has also been accused of assembling a fleet of cargo planes to traffic military-grade weapons to conflict zones around the world since the 1990s.
According to the indictment, he was suspected of creating front companies that used his planes to deliver food and medical supplies, as well as arms.
His alleged trafficking activities in Liberia prompted U.S. authorities to freeze his American assets in 2004 and prohibited U.S. transactions with him, it said.
Less than a year later, the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control placed 30 companies and four people on a specially designated list that carried similar actions against them.
Bout has maintained that he operated legitimate businesses and had acted as a mere logistics provider. His exact age is unclear, but he is believed to be in his late 40s or 50s, with his age in dispute due to different passports and documents. The U.S. attorney's office said it had no confirmed age.
Critics have accused Bout of providing arms to rebels in several countries and fueling bloody conflicts in places such as Liberia and Sierra Leone.
In 2000, then-British Foreign Office Peter Hain branded him "Africa's chief merchant of death" at a time when Bout is believed to have supplied arms to officials in Sierra Leone, a former British colony then embroiled in civil war.
"With today's verdict in the Southern District of New York, one of the world's most notorious merchants in illicit arms has finally been held to account for his heinous criminal profiteering in death and destruction," said DEA Administrator Michele M. Leonhart in a statement
The 2005 movie "Lord of War," starring Nicolas Cage, is considered to be largely inspired by Bout's life.
Editor’s Note: Kathi Lynn Austin, a former Arms Trafficking Expert for the United Nations, is the Executive Director of the Conflict Awareness Project (CAP). Her forthcoming memoir, The Unofficial Spy, is due out in 2012. For more from Kathi Austin, follow her on Twitter.
By Kathi Austin – Special to CNN
There were three chilling moments for me during the third week of Viktor Bout’s trial—and they all had something to do with airplanes.
Last Friday as I sat in the stately Manhattan courtroom and listened to the testimony of James Roberts, a pilot who worked for Viktor Bout in the late 1990’s, goose bumps suddenly crept up my arms. Roberts cavalierly explained how he and other aviators had ferried weapons and/or military personnel for their boss Bout throughout Central Africa.
Next Charles Mokoto, the owner of an African aircraft company, spoke with ease about flying high-level African military personnel into battle action during the same period. When he left the witness stand, I shuddered and pulled my dark brown sweater tight across my chest to ward off the eerie chill as dark memories kicked in.
Like Roberts, Mokoto had journeyed, apparently without trepidation, to New York from Africa in order to describe Bout’s monopoly of air cargo operations during the two Congo wars. As recounted by the two men, Bout had set up his transport hub out of airfields inGoma,Congo (thenZaire) and an unnamed East African country.
That East African nation is Rwanda, but Judge Shira Scheindlin had barred the country’s name from being spoken during trial so as not to prejudice the jury against Bout given its common association with one of the twentieth century’s most horrific genocides.
Since I had investigated firsthand Bout’s gunrunning operations in and out of Central African combat zones, it wasn’t the information that had me visibly shaken. I knew these details by heart. Rather, it was the lack of remorse and fear of reprisal both witnesses displayed as they described how they had once enabled warfare and gross human rights abuses.
The other moment that left me icy was when Bout’s co-conspirator Andrew Smulian related his previous joint ventures with Bout supplying rebel forces in Angola by air. Smulian did not flinch even though these logistical operations were in violation of UN sanctions at the time.
Genocide and conflict in Rwanda,Congo and Angola cost millions of lives and will continue to traumatize survivors for years to come. Yet, during the trial such flesh and blood reality has been glossed over as merely collateral. I wonder how many others in the courtroom feel the weight of this tragedy.
Other than one Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent and two of the DEA’s confidential sources, the aviation experts mentioned above are the only other witnesses that theU.S.prosecution has called in this high-profile trial.
This isn’t surprising. Even Bout’s defense lawyer, Albert Dayan, hasn’t shied from acknowledging that Bout commanded one of the large arms transport fleet in the post-Cold War era until he was sanctioned by the United Nations in March 2004.
Pilots and aviation companies are the lifeline for illegal arms pipelines and often are wars’ repeat offenders—continuing to aid and abet genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes with impunity. These enablers come in all stripes and from all nationalities but often shares common characteristics: a pilot license and/or plane, a daredevil spirit, and callousness towards humanity in order to make a buck.
While such enablers may face international opprobrium, they have operated unscathed for years because few deterrents exist and even less enforcement efforts target their complicity. Aviators are not alone in all this of course. Other types of intermediaries facilitate illicit arms deals and are equally unregulated.
In common parlance, arms middlemen are called “brokers” and include financiers, import/export agents, negotiators, and transport operators used to arrange one or more aspect of an arms deal between the supplier and client. Typically, these middlemen are not the original owners of the weapons and reside neither in the supplier country nor the place where the arms are received.
Since arms brokers play a legitimate role on behalf of lawful manufacturers and governments, an outright ban is not called for. But a tight regulatory regime at both the international and national level is needed to ensure brokers engage only in authorized sales that conform to international law and to provide law enforcement with the necessary tools to pursue offenders.
To date, far less than half of the world’s governments have arms brokering controls in place for small arms and light weapons like those Bout has trafficked, and even these vary tremendously in scope and penalties.
To its credit, theU.S.has one of the most comprehensive arms brokering laws on the books, which first took effect during the Clinton Administration. Passed by the U.S. Congress in 1996 as an amendment to the Arms Export Control Act (AECA), this legislation was designed to close the loophole on unscrupulous off-shore arms trafficking as in the case of Bout and his companies.
The law requires all citizens as well as foreign nationals residing or conducting business in theU.S.to register and obtain licenses for any arms deals that they transact on or off American soil. Moreover, the law specifically includes air transport in the definition of brokering. (A national security exemption is in place forU.S.government transactions).
But while grandstanding this powerful legislation abroad, the U.S. has fumbled in the past on the global stage. There is a chance for thisU.S. to remedy this in July 2012 during the forthcoming UN negotiations for an Arms Trade Treaty (ATT). To do so, theU.S. will have to take a strong lead in bringing about a global regulatory framework on arms brokering as the most effective means to deter small arms from getting into the wrong hands, an initiative it undercut ten years ago at a similar U.N. Conference on the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons.
I’ll write about the potential of the ATT in a future blog, but for now, let’s get back to the airplanes.
Viktor Bout’s defense has been built around the notion that he was conning the undercover DEA operatives, posing as the FARC, about a potential arms deal only because he wanted to sell them a couple of airplanes – ones in his fleet that Bout still had parked in the Congo despite the fact these assets should have been frozen under the current UN sanctions regime.
TheU.S.called the aviation witnesses in an effort to provide additional corroboration that Bout had the intent and ability to supply arms as in the past. The prosecution has argued that the airplanes were just part and parcel of the entire package deal, as it would typically be for multi-capacity arms dealers like Bout.
On the surface, the positions of the prosecution and defense may appear to be different. But on closer examination, each point to the same conclusion when it comes to the problematic way arms trafficking networks conduct their murky business by air.
In the wrong hands, as Bout exemplifies, aviation can contribute to a diabolical ecosystem destroying many lives when weapons are illicitly delivered. When it comes to tightening arms brokering controls in the future, this sector must be included.
After their testimony, the pilots walked away free as though warmly washing their hands of past misdeeds. But as I sat on the hard bench and reflected on the devastation and its aftermath, the chills stayed with me.
The views expressed in this article are solely those of Kathi Austin.