Viktor Bout’s attorneys pressed a last-ditch legal gambit to derail his sentencing next week, asking a federal judge not to sentence him at all. Convicted on four counts of conspiracy last November, Bout faces a minimum of 25 years in prison up to life _ the penalty preferred by federal prosecutors. In a March 23 sentencing memorandum to U.S. District Judge Shira A. Scheindlin, Bout’s lawyer played to the case’s U.S.-Russia diplomatic repercussions, urging the government to “reexamine the matter of the United States v. Viktor Bout.” Bout asked Scheindlin “to decline to sentence Viktor Bout and thereby become an unwilling party in his wrongful prosecution.”

Dayan resurrected his pre-trial suggestions that the U.S. had pursued Bout “for purely political reasons” because the government had been embarrassed by its own dealings with him. Dayan said Bout “assisted the United States in this country’s ill-advised Iraq war.” Despite Bout’s own dismissal of his portrayal in “Merchant of Death,” Dayan cites the book’s reporting to assert that “starting in late 2003 Bout-owned or Bout-controlled companies had contracts flying in tents, food and other supplies for United States firms working for the United States military in Iraq.” Dayan has not supplied his own proof of that relationship and agreed before trial with Scheindlin’s instructions that Bout’s role in Iraq would not be raised during the trial.

Bout is scheduled for sentencing on Thursday, April 5.

—Wall Street Journal, “In an unusual move, suspected Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout has asked a federal judge to not sentence him next week, saying that doing so would make her “an unwilling party in his wrongful prosecution.”