Abominable Arms Dealer Viktor Bout Returns

He's the lord of war, according to this fictional movie starring Nicolas Cage.

But despite much evidence, victor bout has always denied being one of the biggest arms dealers of the nineties, fueling civil wars and bolstering Moscow's interests.

Though he's still never really wanted to be a nobody.

In an interview with CNN, he admitted he had worked for the Russian government.

In the end he was not superhuman and was arrested in Thailand after a U.S. sting operation.

While his decades of life in the shadows had left him full affaced, he was always just a pilot courier, he insisted, even as he was led into this bank or courtroom.

"Today a Manhattan federal court accused arm dealer Viktor Bout begins to face American justice," the US Attorney said at the time

The US sting was complex oone over many months and countries, catching him offering weapons to u. s. agents pretending to be Colombian terrorists.

He was eventually extradited to face a New York trial for conspiring to kill Americans.

It saw him sentenced to 25 years in prison in a medium security facility in illinois.

There, he told me in emails he was in good spirits, brushing up on his many languages. In 2019 he was very glad when his wife and daughter visited.

But he was slowly edging towards the end of his sentence, perhaps a reason his role in a swap was more appealing.

The biggest mystery about Bout was why the us wanted him so fiercely.

Yes, he had allegedly dealt arms to a lot of bad people across Africa and the 90s, but that was known and exposed.

observers searched for another weightier reason and wondered if he had served alongside any kremlin insiders in his long past overseas.

That remains a huge question mark.

is he a pilot in the wrong place at the very worst times?

Or as so many have said, a profiteer and policy tour for moscow in the world's nastiest wars?