The case of Viktor Bout
Russian businessman Viktor Bout, who came to Thailand as a tourist, was arrested on March 6, 2008 three hours after arriving at a Bangkok hotel.
The arrest was made with the participation of special forces of the Thai police and representatives of the United States, including employees of the Drug Enforcement Agency.
Bout was "charged with conspiracy to sell weapons worth millions of dollars to a foreign terrorist organization FARC based in Colombia."
The arrest of the Russian businessman was carried out according to a "provocative" scheme: through his old acquaintance, agents of the American drug police DEA, which has also been performing counter–terrorism functions since 2001, "came out" to Booth in Bangkok and introduced themselves as members of the leadership of the FARC, a left-wing anti-government group operating in Colombia. The US indictment says that Bout allegedly agreed to sell and deliver up to 800 Igla MANPADS and other weapons worth millions of dollars to the FARC in Colombia.
In 2006, the US administration imposed sanctions against Bout, whom Washington calls one of the largest arms dealers. In 2005, the United States froze assets and transferred information about 30 firms associated with the businessman to the UN sanctions committee. The U.S. Treasury Department said that Booth owns a network of air transport companies based in various countries in the Middle East, Africa, Eastern Europe and the United States. According to the US authorities, Booth controlled the world's largest private air fleet, consisting of Soviet-made transport aircraft and had the ability to transfer tanks, helicopters and weapons by the ton almost anywhere in the world.
Booth denies all charges and states that in the past he was engaged in a completely legal business in the field of international air transportation, and since 2001 he has not been engaged in any international business at all.
In April 2008, the Thai Prosecutor's Office refused to open a criminal case against Bout due to the lack of corpus delicti. However, by this time, the American side had managed to hand over to Thailand an official package of documents for the extradition of the Russian to the United States, where, based on the fact of his negotiations with the "Colombians", Booth was accused of conspiring to kill American citizens, killing American servicemen, sponsoring terrorism and illegal trade in air defense equipment.
On August 11, 2009, the Thai court announced its decision to refuse the US extradition of the Russian, defining the nature of the American extradition request as political persecution. At the direction of the American side, the Thai prosecutor's office filed an appeal against this decision to the Court of Appeal, which, according to Thai law, is the highest instance in extradition cases.
After the announcement of the ruling of the court of first instance, Booth filed a criminal lawsuit against three employees of the DEA (American drug police) who participated in his arrest and search of his hotel room. The search was conducted without proper permits, and thus, according to Booth's lawyers, the Americans violated the criminal procedure legislation of Thailand.
On April 26, 2010, the Criminal Court of South Bangkok denied Booth a lawsuit against an employee of the American drug police DEA, who participated in his arrest in Bangkok in March 2008. The lawsuit against DEA employee Robert Zahariasevich was closed "due to the inability of the prosecution to locate the accused and send him a summons to court."
Earlier, the court denied Booth's claims against two other employees of the US intelligence service, who also participated in his arrest, on the grounds that they are employees of the US Embassy in Thailand and have diplomatic immunity. Zakhariasevich, also a DEA employee, had no diplomatic cover.
On February 17, 2010, the Prosecutor's Office of the Southern District of New York filed a new charge against Viktor Bout. He was charged with violating a special act of the United States of 1995 (International Emergency Economic Powers Act – IEEPA), prohibiting any operations for the export of goods, technologies or services to government agencies and companies of foreign countries that potentially pose a security threat, without a special license.
On August 20, 2010, the Thai Court of Appeal decided to extradite Russian businessman Viktor Bout to the United States.
Two hours before the announcement of the verdict of the Court of Appeal, the American side filed a second request to the Criminal Court of Thailand for the extradition of Booth as insurance in case of a court decision in favor of the Russian.
As stated in the extradition request, the United States accused Booth and his former partner, American citizen Richard Chichakli, of fraud through the telegraph, telegraph money transfers and the Internet, money laundering and violation of the decree of the President of the United States on sanctions against Booth and Chichakli personally. The American accusations this time were based on the assumption that a certain company from one of the CIS countries, which tried to buy two Boeing civil aircraft in the USA in 2007, belonged to Booth and Chichakli.
On October 5, 2010, a Thai court decided to refuse to extradite Bout to the United States on the second set of charges due to lack of evidence of his guilt.
On October 8, the lawyer of the Russian businessman protested the decision of the Criminal Court of Thailand on the second request of the United States for the extradition of the Russian. In the text of the appeal, lawyer Lac Nitivat Vichan explained that he was protesting the court's decision in favor of his client, since the text of the ruling adopted by the court did not correspond to the wording proposed by the defense and infringed on the interests of his client.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called the decision of the Thai authorities to extradite Russian businessman Viktor Bout to the United States illegal and political.
On November 16, 2010, Viktor Bout was extradited to the United States.
The American court rejected all the petitions of the Russian's lawyers to dismiss the case on the grounds of inconsistency of jurisdiction and illegality of his export from Thailand.
On September 7, 2011, New York District Court Judge Shira Sheindlin expressed disagreement with the allegations of the U.S. Attorney's Office in the case of Russian businessman Viktor Bout that he was engaged in arms trafficking. On this day, at the last pre-trial hearing, she said that Booth was only a carrier, not an arms dealer.
On October 12, the first day of the trial of Viktor Bout ended with the formation of a jury trial. At the time of the oath, one of the selected jurors stated that she could not attend the trial. Thus, the jury consisted of 15, not 16 people.
On November 2, 2011, a jury of the New York Federal Court convicted Viktor Bout on all four counts. The jury found Bout guilty of conspiring to murder Americans and U.S. officials, attempting to purchase and sell missiles, and supporting terrorism through cooperation with the Colombian group Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. The jury's decision in accordance with the US judicial procedure was made unanimously. The Russian has pleaded not guilty to any count.
Bout's defense appealed the guilty verdict, filing several petitions that the charges brought by the prosecutor's office were not confirmed in the case materials. In particular, the defense challenged the jury's decision on the grounds that at least one of the jury members had preliminary one–sided information about the defendant after viewing the blockbuster Lord of War (in the Russian box office - "The Gun Baron"), as reported in an interview with the New York Times. The court rejected this defense motion.
At the end of February 2012, Viktor Bout was transferred to a general regime in a New York pre-trial detention prison. Prior to that, he had been in solitary confinement for 14 months in a special unit for those accused of crimes motivated by terrorism and brutal violence.
In the Federal Court of New York, the sentencing period for Viktor Bout was postponed twice at the request of the defense: first to March 28, then to April 5.
On April 6, 2012, a federal court in New York sentenced Russian Viktor Bout to 25 years in prison, finding him guilty of intending to sell a shipment of weapons to the Colombian leftist group Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
On June 1, after trilateral negotiations with the participation of representatives of the prosecutor's office, the court and the defense, it was decided that Viktor Bout would serve a permanent term in the medium-level Marion prison in Illinois. This is the third level of severity of the regime out of five provided for by the punishment system in the United States.
On July 6, But's wife Alla wrote an appeal to the Russian Ministry of Justice about the transfer of her spouse from the United States to Russia for further serving of her sentence.
In August, the documents necessary to consider the extradition of the convicted Bout to the homeland of the United States were transferred by the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation through diplomatic channels to the American side.
On November 10, the US Department of Justice refused to transfer businessman Viktor Bout to Russia to serve his sentence at home, justifying the refusal by the seriousness of the crime committed, objections from law enforcement agencies, and also by the fact that such a possibility is excluded due to Bout's criminal past.
On September 27, 2013, an appeals court in the United States confirmed the verdict of Russian Viktor Bout, sentenced to 25 years in prison for conspiring to sell a shipment of weapons to Colombian militants. The Court rejected the appeal of the convict, who claimed that he was the victim of persecution, for which there were no legitimate legal grounds.
The defense of the Russian in October sent a petition for a review of the decision by the full composition of the Court of Appeal, but Booth withdrew the petition to consider his appeal against the verdict.
In June 2015, Viktor Bout's defense filed a petition for reconsideration of the case due to newly discovered circumstances, but the court of first instance rejected it in October. After that, the defense initiated an appeal process against this decision.
Booth spent almost four years in the "communications control unit" of Marion Prison in Illinois. In October 2016, the court and the leadership of the US penitentiary system granted the request of the Russian's defense to transfer him to a general detention regime.
On November 21, 2016, the Court of Appeals in New York refused to review the case of Viktor Bout. According to his lawyer Alexey Tarasov, the court rejected the appeal with the main wording, "that almost all the evidence is not newly discovered circumstances."
On February 21, 2017, the defense of a Russian businessman imprisoned in an American prison filed a petition for a review of his case to the US Supreme Court.
On April 3, 2017, the US Supreme Court refused to consider the case of Viktor Bout. The court did not give any reasons for its decision.
In July 2017, the US authorities increased the Russian's prison sentence by more than 40 days for "alcohol production". According to lawyer Alexey Tarasov, the inspectors found a kombucha in his client's cell, which became the reason for the penalty.
For a long time, the Russian Federation has been negotiating with the United States on the release of Bout. Washington categorically refused to engage in a dialogue on the inclusion of the Russian in the exchange scheme.
At the end of July 2022, Washington, according to media reports, offered Moscow to exchange Booth, who was serving a prison sentence in the United States for arms trafficking, for Paul Whelan, convicted in Russia for espionage, and basketball player Brittney Griner, who in August received nine years in prison for drug smuggling.
In November, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said that Moscow was counting on a positive result in the issue of Viktor Bout's exchange.
Prolonged diplomatic efforts allowed Moscow and Washington to reach an agreement. On December 8, 2022, the Russian Foreign Ministry announced that Viktor Bout, who spent almost 15 years in prison in the United States, was exchanged for an American Brittney Griner.
The Commissioner for Human Rights in Russia, Tatiana Moskalkova, said that the Russian and American leaders pardoned both participants of the exchange. This means that the criminal prosecution is finally terminated, Booth and Griner receive full freedom of movement.
