“Princes” and “Lords” of Death

Judging from American case law, you can currently surmise for how many years Viktor Bout’s imprisonment will last. After all, he is on the beaten track paved by a man whose nickname is also fine-sounding. If Bout — to keep Hollywood’s ball rolling — is called the “Lord of War,” Monzer al-Kassar was none other than the “prince of Marbella.” In 2007 he was arrested at that fashionable Spanish resort.*

The arrest warrant for al-Kassar was issued by Michael Garcia, the attorney for the Southern District of New York, soon after he signed arrest warrant for Bout. Their accusations are exactly the same: the attempt to sell more than 12,000 units of armaments, including surface-to-air missiles, to Colombian rebels from Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). In November 2009 al-Kassar was sentenced to 30 years of imprisonment by the U.S. federal court in Manhattan. Neither a wide circle of acquaintances nor a great deal of money was useful to him at that moment.

However, not all “merchants of death” come to a bad end. For example, another arms baron, Adnan Khashoggi, a Saudi Arabian multimillionaire and a graduate of California State University, has a better fate. At the beginning he sold trucks, then rocket launchers, and later armored vehicles and small arms. He was a kind of official representative of leading American arms industry corporations to the Middle East.

Unsurprisingly, it was he who, in 1986, became the key figure of “Iran-Contra” or “Irangate”: The American military and the CIA, acting contrary to international sanctions, secretly sold weapons to Iran in order to make the conflict between Iran and Iraq drag on. The proceeds, which the U.S. Congress was not aware of, were to fund the rebellious Nicaraguan Contras in their strife with the Sandinista government of Daniel Ortega. Of course, it was Khashoggi who was in charge of finances and logistics for the operation.

There was a perfect scandal. The founder of “gonzo journalism” and author of “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” Hunter Thompson, described his feelings as follows: “The GOP will not win another general election in this century. Ronald Reagan has served his purpose, and he is left to wander naked and alone, like King Lear, ‘a poor, infirm, weak and despised old man.’”** Nevertheless, everything turned out all right. Nobody was punished. In 1988 Khashoggi was arrested in Switzerland, extradited to the U.S. and finally… acquitted. Bout, however, can hardly hope for such humanity.

Nowadays Khashoggi enjoys his high life, hosting splendid receptions on his yacht and in his palace. He fraternizes with European ministers and American senators and flirts with the yellow press, making vulgar hints that Paul McCartney’s former wife Hither Mills was his call-girl. At the same time, he’s always on the job: Together with his companion Manucher Ghorbanifar, he provides with arms many of the suffering — from Albanian separatists to the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda. There is evidence that Khashogghi and Ghorbanifar took part in the modern history of Russia: In the mid-1990s, with the aid of vice-president of the self-declared republic of Chechnya Khozh-Ahmed Noukhaev, who was subsequently accused of murder of journalist Paul Klebnikov, they delivered arms and outfits from Saudi Arabia to Chechnya.

The partners have also been spotted operating in Colombia. That is very important because they supplied not FARC, but “paramilitary” detachments. The “paramilitaries” are also combatants, though not ultra-left but rather ultra-right. Drug dealers use them as “death squadrons.” They are loyal to pro-American president Alvaro Uribe. They do not shoot the U.S. Marines. That is why you can sell arms to them. As for Bout — if the accusation is proved — as al-Kassar, he tried to push rockets to the “wrong guys.” Now he is paying for that.

However, it is not as if Viktor Bout is an entirely innocent victim.

“Since 2000 Viktor Bout has been mentioned in 16 UN documents, connected to violations of UN arms embargoes on such countries as Liberia. The UN experts have many files on him: materials, bills, invoices,” noted Vadim Kozyulin, the head of a Center for Policy Studies in Russia program on conventional arms. These files can comprise the American prosecutors’ bill of indictment.

Latest cases of seizing illegal arms consignments:

Sept. 25, 2008. Indian Ocean near Somali coast. Somali pirates seized the Ukrainian cargo ship “Faina”, which held onboard 33 T-72 tanks, 6 multiple GRAD rocket launch systems and the ammunition for them. According to official documents, the ship was bound for Kenya but it was thought that the arms were intended for Sudan, which is under the United Nations arms embargo.

June 16, 2009. Kano, Nigeria. A Ukrainian plane was intercepted, carrying 18 containers with arms. The destination might have been either Malabo, the capital of Equatorial Guinea, or Nigeria itself.

Dec. 12, 2009. Bangkok, Thailand. On board a Ukrainian air company’s plane, coming from Pyongyang, 40 tons of arms were found, including shoulder-fired grenade launchers and man-portable air-defense systems. The destination was supposed to be Ukraine, but experts claim the cargo was for Iran.

Oct. 28, 2010. Lagos, Nigeria. At the seaport of Lagos 13 containers were intercepted with rockets made by the Chinese corporation Norinco, hand grenades, ammunition and other arms which came from Iran. The arms might have been intended for Hamas, Hezbollah or set out for Gambia.

* Translator’s note: “Lord of War” is a 2005 film in which Nicolas Cage plays an illegal arms dealer named Yuri Orlov, who is quite similar to Viktor Bout.

**Editor’s note: This quote, while accurately translated, could not be verified.