Having more to it
then it seems; yesterday the Russian Viktor Bout, 43, who earned the sobriquet
of Merchant of Death as one of the biggest arms traffickers in the world, was extradited from
Thailand.
Captured in a joint US-Thai sting operation in 2008, he fought extradition to
the US in a year-long legal battle – and lost. Wednesday, he pleaded not guilty
to four US terrorism-related charges - three of which carry maximum life
sentences and the fourth up to 15 years in jail.
For Moscow, Bout was much more than an arms merchant however. As a former
Soviet Air Force military translator with strong ties to Russian intelligence,
Bout made several fortunes through his many air transport companies. He
acquired surplus transport planes during the Soviet Union's breakup and used
them to ship illegal arms cargoes through the 1990s to conflict zones, such as
Angola, Liberia, the DR Congo, the Middle East and Colombia, and before that to
Afghanistan and Bosnia.
While claiming he was innocent of anything but providing logistical help, he
gained notoriety as an accomplished sanctions buster. A decade ago, a United
Nations listed him as "a well-known supplier of embargoed non-state
actors" – the international body's definition of arms suppliers to rebels.
Wherever in the
world the UN or the US clamped down sanctions, whether Saddam Hussein's Iraq or
Omar Bashir's Sudan, Bout was to be found with an air
fleet ready for immediate delivery of munitions or any other items required.
In Western
undercover services, he came to be known as the human satellite.
This globe-girdling
operation was clearly not the work of a solo arms trafficker. Many intelligence
sources suspect Bout is himself an intelligence officer or at least had a quid
pro quo arrangement with GRU (military intelligence) and SVR going up to very
senior levels of Russian government. According to this suspicion, they
supported him and he supplied their agents with clandestine information about
the war zones to which he gained access.
If these allegations
are correct, his extradition to the US puts him in position to potentially give
away valuable information not only about his own shady arms operations but also
to shed embarrassing light on sensitive Russian involvement.
Hence the sharp
response from Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov:
It is deeply regrettable that the Thai authorities have yielded to political
pressure from outside and carried out this illegal extradition of VA Bout, he
said Tuesday, Nov. 16. "Contrary to two rulings by a Thai criminal court
which concluded that Viktor Bout's guilt was not proven, he has still - by a
decision of the Thai government - been extradited to the United States."
He complained further: "I consider this to be unprecedented political
pressure on the judicial process and on the government of Thailand. This whole
story is an example of blatant injustice. We, as a state, will continue to
render all necessary assistance to Viktor Bout as a Russian citizen."
In fact the Kremlin
appears to have now woken up from a long slumber and found the will to conduct
a comprehensive reform of Russia's traditionally untouchable spy services.
That President
Dmitry Medvedev, and especially Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, had been roused
to action was apparent from the unheard-of admission by Moscow that the ten
Russian spies arrested in the United States last June were betrayed by a Russian
espionage official.
He was first
identified on Nov. 11 in the Russian Kommersant as
Col. Shcherbakov or Col. Poteyev
and described as head of the "sleepers" department of the SVR – the
Russian CIA, who defected on an undisclosed date to the US and retired now to a
secret condo. SVR assassins were said to be sent to kill him.
In a subsequent
release, Russian intelligence sources referred to two separate defectors:
"Scherbakov, a
counterintelligence operative" said to have escaped two-to-five
years ago; and Poteyev, who reportedly escaped
roundabout May-June, 2010, while working with covert Russian agents in the US.
Poteyev was
described as employed by the CIA from 2003. His family moved legally to
American before his escape.
The conflicting
versions of the same affair attest to a debate within the Kremlin and top
intelligence echelons.Friday, Nov. 12, President
Medvedev stepped in with a rare confession that the June arrests of Russian
agents were made possible by the defection of a senior intelligence official.
On Sunday, November
14, Russian lawmaker Gennady Gudkov, himself a former
KGB colonel who also served for five years in the SVR, confirmed that a Foreign
Intelligence Service colonel who betrayed 11 sleeper agents was possibly
recruited by the United States several years ago.
All this was
interpreted as a well-orchestrated campaign by Russian leaders to pass the buck
for the Russian intelligence fiasco in America and pin it on SVR Director
Mikhail Fradkov. This ploy was designed to clear the
way for his removal and the reunification of the SVR and the FSB, the Russian
version of the FBI.
In its previous
incarnation during the Soviet period, the SVR was called the First Chief
Directorate, FCD. Operating out of Yasenevo
(headquarters today of the SVR), the FCD branch of the KGB struck fear and
respect in the Western intelligence agencies which fought it.
As professionals,
the American CIA, the British MI6 and the Israeli Mossad
could only envy Russian wizardry in the arts of recruiting double agents and
planting them in their enemies' ranks to run clandestine spy networks from
inside Western agencies.
As the Cold War
wound down, US spy chiefs admitted the FCD had them beat in human intelligence,
whereas this American shortcoming was compensated for by superiority in signals
and technical intelligence.
These parameters held true in the Cold War and most of the 1990s, but not
today.
While deeply
immersed in America's combat operations against Al Qaeda and the Taliban and
its involvement in Iraq and other arenas, US intelligence has been able to get
the better of the SVR in at least two major instances.
One was the exposure
in June, which Moscow admitted, of 11 Russian spies who had managed to obtain
US citizenship and set up sleeper cells to await Moscow's instructions for
going into action.
Earlier Developments in Thailand
In a cable written on February 13, 2009, US diplomats
said that in the year after Bout's arrest, extradition proceedings in Thailand
were "going in the way we want" - albeit at a "painfully
slow" pace.
More recently, however, the case had taken a worryingly wrong turn: "There
have been disturbing indications that Bout's ... and Russian supporters have
been using money and influence in an attempt to block extradition," the diplomats
reported.
Bout's claim was that he had flown to Thailand on official government business.
American agents posing as Farc rebels arrested him in
a sting operation in a Bangkok hotel after he allegedly agreed to sell them
millions of dollars of weapons.
Guardian online reported that On February 12, 2009, the US ambassador in
Bangkok, Eric John, raised his concerns about the case in a meeting with
Thailand's prime minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva.
He warned that the extraditions proceedings had become "tainted as a
result of the efforts by Bout's associates to bribe Thai officials".
John said the Americans had uncovered several examples of influence and
corruption. These included the false testimony by a witness, an attempt to
procure the personal secretary of the crown prince of Thailand to testify on
Bout's behalf, and "evidence of bribery schemes gathered throughout the
world".
The online reported Abhisit gave a noncommittal
response, promising to examine any irregularities. In August 2009, the judge ruled
Bout could not be extradited in a stunning setback to the US embassy and its
"Bout team".
The ruling - appealed against by the US - prompted John to write a cable urging
US President Barack Obama to telephone Abhisit and
initiate "a serious discussion of our concerns over the implications of
the Bout verdict".
"We believe Potus [president of the US]
involvement on Bout would have a significant effect here," he pleaded.
The ambassador suggested a gambit to shame Moscow if Bout was freed to go back
to Russia. "We should consider asking the Russians to prosecute Bout if,
in the end, he walks here in Thailand. At the very least perhaps we could force
the Russians to publicly refuse to do so."
Other cables reveal that Bout's fleet of aircraft - allegedly used to deliver
arms to Sierra Leone, Liberia and Congo - are currently rusting at an airstrip
in the United Arab Emirates. On 7 January 2010, the US consulate reported
several of his Soviet cargo planes were stuck at the "sleepy" Ras al-Khaimah (RAK) airport.