(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-03-08 16:11

"But individuals like Viktor Bout are also responsible and it's important that they also face justice," Rapp said. "It is frankly a question I often get in outreach around Sierra Leone: 'Why aren't you prosecuting the Viktor Bouts of the world?'"

Rapp said he would have a good case against Bout for aiding and abetting crimes against humanity and war crimes in Sierra Leone, based on the Russian's arms shipments on behalf of Taylor and the Sierra Leone rebel group, the Revolutionary United Front.

Weapons were delivered into the war zone "at the time they were conducting operations with names like 'No living thing,' and being paid for those shipments with diamonds dug by slave labor," Rapp said.

In October 2006, President Bush issued an executive order freezing the assets of Bout and several associates and warlords in Congo and barring Americans from doing business with them. They were accused of violating international laws involving targeting of children or violating a ban on sales of military equipment to Congo.

According to the DEA's conspiracy complaint against Bout, his partner Smulian acknowledged to one of the undercover agents involved in the sting operation that Bout was unwelcome in most countries and couldn't easily cross borders because of the U.N. ban.

He also said all Bout's assets, worth a claimed $6 billion, had been frozen, the complaint says.

Bout's business centered around a fleet of transport aircraft owned and operated by several closely held companies.

In 2006, Associated Press reporters and photographers witnessed a Kyrgyzstan-registered Ilyushin-76 land at Somalia's Mogadishu International Airport when it was under the control of the Council of Islamic Courts, a group that the US government has linked to al-Qaida.

The aircraft was operated by an air cargo company based in the United Arab Emirates that was allegedly controlled by Bout.

A U.N. commission in charge of monitoring the arms embargo on Somalia later determined the plane delivered shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles to the radical Islamic group.

Bout is believed to have used his fleet of planes and contacts from his days in the Soviet air force to buy weapons in eastern Europe and deliver them to combatants around the world.

US authorities tipped off Thai authorities Monday that Bout was expected to arrive to complete what he thought was an arms deal with the FARC and a Thai court issued an arrest warrant the next day, Thai police Lt. Gen. Adisorn Nontree said.

Bout arrived from Moscow on Thursday morning and checked into a luxury hotel in Bangkok. Within hours, nearly two dozen Thai police and US law enforcement agents poured into the hotel and apprehended him, said police Col. Petcharat Sengchai.

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