"The book, by journalists Douglas Farah and Stephen Braun, says the flights dropped about 10,000 weapons to the rebels, "enabling them to greatly enhance their military capabilities." A 2005 report by the human rights group Amnesty International described Bout as "the most prominent foreign businessman" involved in trafficking arms to U.N.-embargoed destinations in Bulgaria, Slovakia, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan and other countries. The report implicated Bout in transferring "very large quantities of arms" from Ukraine that were delivered to Uganda via Tanzania aboard a Greek-registered cargo ship. A U.N. travel ban imposed on Bout that was still current as of last November said he supported former Liberian President Charles Taylor's regime in efforts to destabilize Sierra Leone and gain illicit access to diamonds. In October 2006, President Bush issued an executive order freezing the assets of Bout and several associates and warlords in Congo and barring Americans from doing business with them. They were accused of violating international laws involving targeting of children or violating a ban on sales of military equipment to Congo. The U.N. imposed an arms embargo in 2003 on the provinces of North and South Kivu and the Ituri regions of eastern Congo, and also on groups that were not part of that year's peace agreement for the region. Ruslan Pukhov, director of the Moscow-based Center for Strategies and Technologies, described Bout as a rich "adventurist, one of these guys who emerged at the start of the 1990s and started pumping weapons from the former Soviet Union into Africa." "He is not in the same league as people who make and trade weapons," he said. "He was influential and rich, but only in these vacated markets where countries were under embargo and state intermediaries didn't dare to sell." Bout was widely believed to be a model for the arms dealer portrayed by Nicholas Cage in the 2005 movie "Lord of War." ------ Associated Press reporters Ambika Ahuja in Bangkok and Peter Leonard in Moscow contributed to this report."

Source:http://abcnews.go.com/International/...4398670&page=2

Better source & information.

"A Russian man suspected of being one of the world's biggest illegal arms dealers has been arrested in Thailand.

Viktor Bout - who has been dubbed the "merchant of death" - was picked up by police at a luxury hotel in Bangkok.

The Thai authorities acted on a warrant issued by the US, which accuses Mr Bout of supplying arms to Colombian rebels.

He has also been accused of breaking UN embargoes on arms sales to many countries from central Asia to Africa, but has never been prosecuted.

When Belgium and Interpol issued an international arrest warrant for him in 2002, Mr Bout returned to Russia, where he was protected from extradition by the country's constitution.

Deportation

Lt Gen Pongpat Chayapan, head of the Thai Crime Suppressino Bureau, said Mr Bout was arrested at a hotel in Bangkok shortly after he arrived in Thailand while attempting to "procure weapons for Colombia's Farc rebels".

The left-wing Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) have been seeking to overthrow the Colombian government for more than four decades.

"We have followed him for several months. He just came back to Thailand today," Gen Pongpat said.

"We will take legal action against him here, before deporting him to face trial in another country, likely the US."

The US warrant stemmed from an earlier one issued by the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), he said.

Unconfirmed US media reports say Mr Bout was arrested during negotiations to sell weapons in a sting orchestrated by a DEA special operations unit.

A spokesman for the US embassy in Bangkok congratulated Thai police on the arrest, but could not provide any details about the possible role of US officials.

The US treasury department imposed sanctions on Mr Bout's businesses in October 2006, seizing his fleet of cargo planes and freezing many of his assets.

UN embargoes

Mr Bout, 41, is said to have graduated from Moscow's military institute in the early 1990s and was a major in the Soviet KGB.

According to a 2007 book about him - entitled Merchant of Death - Money, Guns, Planes and the Man Who Makes War Possible - he set up a network of companies using redundant Soviet military planes.

A 2005 report by the human rights group, Amnesty International, said Mr Bout was "the most prominent foreign businessman" breaking UN embargoes on arms sales to countries such as Bulgaria, Slovakia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan.

He has also been accused of supplying weapons to supporters of former Liberian President Charles Taylor, rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Taleban in Afghanistan and even al-Qaeda during the 1990s.

Mr Bout's life is believed to have been the inspiration for Nicolas Cage's character in the 2005 film, Lord of War.

Although he has been investigated by the authorities in several countries, Mr Bout has never been prosecuted for arms dealing."

Source:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7281297.stm