A court of Bangkok rejected this weekend the dossier that Colombia presented to favor the extradition of the presumed Russian drug and arms dealer Viktor Bout to the United States. The Thai judge alleged that the request was out of term, but included in the American appeal a complaint of Bout, known as the Merchant of Death.
The Thai court said that the material sent by the Colombian official was not properly issued and that the case has already been finalized, so no new documents were to be admitted.
United States appealed to the General Prosecutor of Thailand the sentence that denied the extradition of Bout. An American court looks to prosecute Bout for selling arms to the Farc guerrillas, conspiracy to assassinate American official and buying rocket launchers.
To support the American appeal, Jaime Bermúdez, the Colombian Minister of Foreign Affairs, prepared a 300 pages dossier on the activities of Bout with the Farc, a communist insurgent group classified by UN, the European Union and Colombia as a terrorist organization. In the dossier, the Colombian government described the Russian as one of the ‘most dangerous illegal arm traffickers’ of the world and the main suspect in selling to the Farc hundred rocket launchers and other arms.
The Bermudez document exposes also 607 reasons why the Farc must be considered by Thailand a terrorist group and not a political organization.
Viktor Bout was a KGB agent and pilot. He was arrested in March 2008 by agents of the anti-drugs police of US in the Sofitel Hotel in Bangkok. In the beginning Thailand wanted to prosecute him as a supporter of terrorism, but the court concluded that there were not enough evidences. To this, US appealed the verdict using the Colombian report. The refusal of the appeal means that Bout can be free.
United States and Britain say that Bout is the leader of a powerful net of arms traffickers. He had connections with dictator regimes through Asia and Africa like Charles Taylor of Libera and Osama bin Laden. The fame of the Russian former KGB agent inspired the American movie Lord of War. Dout is represented by Nicholas Cage.