In Liberia and Across Africa, Viktor Bout’s Bloody Legacy Is Still Felt
Originally, George Weah, a former international soccer star, is today the president of the West African nation, approved the establishment of the court. Recently, however, he has been silent on the subject.
With African leaders convene this week in Washington As for the high-profile summit, Mr. Bility urged President Biden to talk to President Weah about establishing such a court.
According to Douglas Farah and Stephen Braun, Bout’s client list is long, who wrote a book about him, “The Merchant of Death: Money, Guns, Airplanes, and the Maker of War.” He had simultaneously supplied arms to Ahmad Shah Massoud, leader of Afghanistan’s Northern Alliance, they wrote, and to Massoud’s enemy, the Taliban.
Mr. Bout combined his smuggling activities with legitimate — and lucrative — businesses, such as buying gladiolus flowers for $2 each in South Africa and shipping tons of flowers to Dubai. , where he sold them for $100 a spike. He sent UN peacekeepers to Somalia and East Timor, and French troops to Rwanda during the 1994 genocide, he told a New York Times reporter in 2003.
Mr. Rapp, the prosecutor, said that Mr. Bout’s sentence was a bit like that of Al Capone, the Chicago mobster who was eventually jailed for tax evasion – not murder, smuggling or fraud.
“I want someone other than Viktor Bout to be traded,” Mr. Rapp said. “But the fact that he has served nearly 15 years of his 25-year sentence is a consolation. Al Capone only made eight.”
Ruth Maclean reports from Dakar, Senegal, and Dounard bonds from Freetown, Sierra Leone.