Is Bout Being Tried Fairly?

The Case against the Russian Businessman Carries Signs of a Political Order

What does the legal process against the Russian businessman Viktor Bout, who has been nicknamed “the armed baron” by the American press, have in common with the presidential campaign just taking off?

At first glance, we are dealing with two unrelated things. Yet we can assume that certain hidden springs exist that influence the trial and directly have to do with the approaching 2012 presidential elections.

U.S. authorities have accused the businessman of planning to sell a lot of weapons to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), which Washington considers a terrorist organization. At the same time, Thailand, where Bout resided prior to his arrest, has maintained that it does not regard the FARC as a criminal group.

At the center of the accusations lies his alleged identification of American secret agents posing as representatives of the FARC. In one conversation, Bout is supposed to have promised to help the rebels. Yet if we are to believe this account, a legal paradox arises from the fact that Bout didn’t intend to actually deliver the weapons to any American territory. He, as a Russian citizen living in Thailand, is nevertheless being tried in accordance with American law for actions he did not commit but could have in the third country. The businessman’s lawyers are in turn determined to prove that he dealt in planes, not in weapons.

On Thursday it became known that Bout secured a positive verdict on one of the most important issues of his case. Following a petition by his lawyers, the judge excluded the interrogation record from the materials necessary for the trial. American examiners had conducted the interrogation while Bout was still in a Thai prison. The judge agreed with the arguments that the questioning had taken place under pressure and that the defendant’s participation was not voluntary.

The defense maintained that Bout asked the American examiners to postpone the questioning due to not feeling well and a poor emotional state, but he was rejected. From the very beginning, it was evident that Bout’s case carried all the signs of a political order. Indeed, the maniacal desire of the American officials to get ahold of the businessman, extraditing him from Thailand, is driven by reasons other than an attempt to intersect a delivery of weapons to Colombia. There is also a behind-the-scenes side to the Bout case. Russia considers neither the trial against him to be lawful nor its possible verdict to be impartial. It is known that in response to the White House’s compilation of a black list of Russian functionaries barred entry to the United States, our country is creating a mirror image document in response. It could include, among others, the persons involved in the two highly publicized cases in America against Russian nationals. These are the trials of businessman Viktor Bout and of pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko, who stands accused of transporting narcotics “contraband” out of Liberia.

According to Moscow, the second case also violates international law and illegally issues the American judicial system an extraterritorial status. If Russia announces the existence of its own black list, it would become a topic of discussion in American society at a time of increasing momentum for the presidential elections. It is possible that the judge’s ruling, for the first time in agreement with Bout’s lawyers, is intended to create the illusion of impartiality of American justice. With that, society is called to protest: Persons participating in such a trial are clearly not carrying out a political order and may therefore not be indicated in any black lists.