'Merchant of Death' Viktor Bout Sentenced to 25 Years; Trial Ignored His Ties to U.S. & Dick Cheney

[Octafish]

Like for Manny Noriega, and Saddam Hussein, and Muammar Qaddafi, time ran out for Viktor Bout.



Weird how that always is.

"Merchant of Death" Viktor Bout Sentenced to 25 Years; Trial Ignored His Ties to U.S., Dick Cheney

DemocracyNow!
April 6, 2012

EXCERPT...

(Democracy Now! interviewed) a former U.N. arms trafficking investigator who tracked Bout for more than a decade, Kathi Lynn Austin, executive director of the Conflict Awareness Project, a group dedicated to tracking global weapons traffickers and exposing the illicit world of war profiteering.

SNIP...

AMY GOODMAN: What was Viktor Bout’s relationship with the U.S. government and with U.S. companies?

KATHI LYNN AUSTIN: Well, Viktor Bout has served many governments in the past in their national security operations. So even when I was bringing forward compelling evidence—I collected forensic evidence, I collected documentary evidence in the field. And even as I was bringing forward that information, I was testifying before the U.S. Congress, I was talking to U.S. State Department intelligence officials—this is from the mid-1990s—still there was no action taken against Viktor Bout. And that was because the U.S. government saw that his services were very valuable for national security operations.

The most recent case where American officials and American private security firms were colluding with Viktor Bout was during the Iraq war. And that is one of the startling reveals during the trial and the sentencing. Viktor Bout wrote to the judge, basically saying, "Look, I’ve also worked for the U.S. companies. I’ve flown 140 flights. They’ve paid me $6 million." That’s probably, by the way, just the tip of the iceberg. "And so, why would you be convicting me, when, in fact, at the time that I was providing these services for the U.S. government, it was in violation of a U.S. law, an executive order signed by President Bush at the time, and it was in violation of U.N. sanctions?"

SNIP...

KATHI LYNN AUSTIN: Well, we know President Bush in 2004 signed an executive order making it illegal for any U.S. entity to do business with Viktor Bout. We had a number of private security firms. We had Brown & Root, we had Halliburton, that were linked to former Vice President Cheney, who were involved at the time with Viktor Bout. Even as we investigators confronted the U.S. government about these illicit activities, these private security firms continued to use Viktor Bout in violation of U.S law, in violation of U.N. sanctions, even American agencies. On one hand, you had the Department of Justice issuing a list of all companies and entities that the U.S. government and U.S. private firms were prohibited from doing business with. Viktor Bout’s companies were on that list. So you had the Department of Justice, on one hand, and yet you had the Department of Defense that continued to see—to seek out Viktor Bout’s services.

CONTINUED...

http://www.democracynow.org/2012/4/6/merchant_of_death_viktor_bout_sentenced

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