Convicted arms dealer Viktor Bout has dropped his effort to gain a hearing before the full U.S. 2nd Court of Appeals, following the court’s earlier unanimous rejection of his appeal.
Albert Dayan, Bout’s lawyer during the Russian’s conviction in federal court in New York on conspiracy charges, informed the appeals court on Nov. 1 that Bout had instructed him by e-mail to withdraw his petition to the court.
Dayan did not explain Bout’s reasoning, but a Moscow-based lawyer, Alexei Binetsky, recently disclosed during a U.S. trip that Bout had hired him to handle Bout’s efforts to cut short his 25-year-prison sentence. Binetsky indicated he was pressing to find legal grounds for a new trial.
In Moscow, Bout’s wife, Alla, told the Russian news service, RAPSI, that Dayan’s services had been terminated and that “there is no point in further appeal.”
Meanwhile, federal prosecutors in the case against alleged Bout aide Richard Chichakli filed motions in New York opposing the dismissal of Chichakli’s indictment. The prosecutors denied Chichakli’s charges of vindictive prosecution and also opposed Chichakli’s effort to have numerous documents, including “Merchant of Death,” introduced as evidence.
According to prosecutors, Chichakli notified the U.S. on Oct. 31 that he would seek to admit “Merchant of Death” at his trial as evidence of vindictive government conduct. Prosecutors said they opposed the move as an attempt to introduce inadmissable hearsay evidence at the trial.