According to press reports, the U.S. government is prepared to swap notorious Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout for Paul Whelan and Brittney Griner, two Americans currently jailed in Russia.
WHITE PLAINS, NY - NOVEMBER 16: In this photo provided by the U.S. Department of Justice, former Soviet military officer and arms trafficking suspect Viktor Bout deplanes after arriving at Westchester County Airport November 16, 2010 in White Plains, New York. Bout was extradited from Thailand to the U.S. to face terrorism charges after a final effort by Russian diplomats to have him released failed. According to press reports, the U.S.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union until his capture in a 2008 Drug Enforcement Agency sting operation in Bangkok, Bout supplied a rogue's gallery of governments and militias with guns, ammunition and aircraft. Nicolas Cage played a thinly veiled version of Bout in the 2005 film"Lord of War," although the real-life version's antics were more cinematically uncanny.
The U.S. sanctioned Bout in 2004 due to his gunrunning to Liberia; a year later, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned four of Bout’s associates and 30 of his companies. Peter Hain, the former minister of state for Africa at the British Foreign Office, told the London Sunday Telegraph in 2002 that Bout was “supplying the Taliban and al-Qaida,” an allegation that Bout always denied, portraying himself as an honest businessman toting innocent wares such as textiles and furniture to places like Afghanistan.
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