A U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent followed prosecution and defense opening statements by telling jurors in the Viktor Bout trial how the global string operation worked. Witness William Brown, a DEA agent, said undercover informants posing as South American terrorists were told by their U.S. handlers to make clear to Bout what they planned to do with the weapons they offered to buy from him.

—Washington Post, “By the age of 30, according to McGuire, Bout had acquired 30 cargo planes and an almost mythical reputation as a weapons supplier of choice for myriad armed groups in Africa during the 1990s. His dealings were documented in the book “Merchant of Death: Money, Guns, Planes, and the Man Who Makes War Possible,” by a former Washington Post reporter, Douglas Farah, and Stephen Braun.”

—New York Times, “On the first day of Mr. Bout’s trial in Federal District Court, the prosecutor, Brendan R. McGuire, described how confidential informers working for the Drug Enforcement Administration had lured Mr. Bout out of Moscow in an elaborate sting operation that touched several countries and ultimately led to his arrest in 2008 in Bangkok.”

—AP, “Bout, a vegetarian and classical music fan who speaks six languages, has been accused — though not in this court case — of supplying weapons that fueled civil wars in South America, the Middle East and Africa, with clients ranging from Liberia’s Charles Taylor to Moammar Gadhafi to the Taliban government that ran Afghanistan. He was an inspiration for an arms dealer character played by Nicolas Cage in the 2005 film “Lord of War.”