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Most of those flights - estimated in the hundreds - occurred after then-President George W. Bout companies were used to fly for government contractors in Iraq. Ironically, the United States is also among Bout's clients, even indirectly, Farah said Wednesday. The site said the United States case against him is based on 'lies' and paid informants.Īttempts by CNN to contact Bout's wife were unsuccessful Wednesday. contracts he arranged with the help of others for Victor's companies, and then became mad for vengeance when Victor refused to continue paying him.' He first became known when the United Nations began investigating him in the early-to-mid 1990s and the United States began to get involved, Farah told CNN.īout's website, which spells his name Victor, says he became notorious because of a smear campaign, 'fictitious tales and stories which were generated from one source - a corrupt United Nations contractor who was generously paid for the U.N. I think he had foresight, and I think he understood the world changes much more than the average Soviet bloc person.' 'He was clearly aware of who past clients had been. 'He knew the African market,' Farah said Wednesday.

'He simply wedded the three things, taking aircraft for almost nothing, filling them with cheaply purchased weapons from the arsenals, and flying them to clients who could pay.' 'He was a Soviet officer, most likely a lieutenant, who simply saw the opportunities presented by three factors that came with the collapse of the USSR and the state sponsorship that entailed: abandoned aircraft on the runways from Moscow to Kiev, no longer able to fly because of the lack of money for fuel or maintenance huge stores of surplus weapons that were guarded by guards suddenly receiving little or no salary and the booming demand for those weapons from traditional Soviet clients and newly emerging armed groups from Africa to the Philippines,' Farah told the magazine. He said Bout's rise stemmed from the end of Communism and the rise of capitalism in the early 1990s in the former Soviet bloc.

Others have said it was actually Angola - which would make sense, as Russia had a large military presence there at the time, Farah told CNN. 'He graduated from the Military Institute on Foreign Languages, a well-known feeder school for Russian military intelligence, and is known to have a true gift for languages,' Farah told Mother Jones.īout has said that he worked as a military officer in Mozambique. 'His mother was supposedly very high in the KGB,' Farah said, adding that Bout has consistently denied that. Farah told Mother Jones magazine in 2007 that according to his multiple passports, Bout was born in 1967 in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, the son of a bookkeeper and an auto mechanic.Ī pro-Bout website - Farah said Bout put it up himself - says he was born into an 'average home and an average family' and that his parents were employees in the 'administrative and accounting fields.'īut, Farah said, some reports are that Bout's parents were involved in intelligence. 'His early days are a mystery,' said Douglas Farah, a senior fellow at the International Assessment and Strategy Center who co-authored a book on Bout. Drug Enforcement Administration agents led a sting operation by posing as members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), officials said. American law enforcement officers have spent years pursuing him, and the extradition process from Thailand was an arduous one for them.īout is accused of supplying weapons to war zones around the world, from Sierra Leone to Afghanistan. officers or employees, conspiring to acquire and use an anti-aircraft missile and conspiring to provide material support or resources to a designated foreign terrorist organization. He faces charges in the United States of conspiring to kill U.S. (CNN) - He's known as the 'Merchant of Death' and the 'Lord of War,' - an alleged international arms dealer straight out of a cloak-and-dagger spy novel who eluded authorities for years and inspired Hollywood villains.īut in reality, according to those who have seen or met Viktor Bout, he is a somber man, sometimes nattily dressed, a wheeler-dealer who has insisted he is innocent of the allegations leveled against him.īout, a Russian citizen and former military officer, speaks six languages 'and I could see him bargaining in all six at the same time,' wrote CNN's Jill Dougherty in 2008, recalling her meeting with Bout in 2002 in Moscow, Russia.īout arrived in New York late Tuesday after being extradited from Thailand. Read more as the accused arms dealer pleads not guilty. NEW:Bout sees himself as a soldier and businessman.NEW: Little is known about Bout's early days.NEW: Author doesn't believe nations want Viktor Bout to tell what he knows.

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