Stuck in federal prison and with dwindling legal options, Viktor Bout asked a U.S. appeals court in New York last week to throw out his 2011 conspiracy conviction. Bout’s lawyer cited reporting in “Merchant of Death” in claiming that his aviation work for the U.S. in Iraq led to his targeting in a government sting operation.
Bout has tried this legal tactic before, quickly rejected by the New York federal trial judge who sentenced him to 25 years in prison last year (Bout is now housed in a federal medium-security prison in Marion, Ill.) But Bout’s reliance on a book that he once dismissed as fiction (he has long denied any dealings with the Taliban or other controversial militant clients, as described in the book) raises intriguing questions of whether he now acknowledges the extensive flights that his air cargo planes flew for the U.S. military and civilian authority in and out of Iraq between 2003 and 2007.
Bout’s lawyer, Albert Y. Dayan, referenced MOD repeatedly in sketching Bout’s work for the U.S. in Iraq in a 56-page brief submitted to the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals court last week. But the attorney added no new information to the book’s reporting on that period, and was careful not to suggest in any way that Bout agreed personally with his portrayal in the book.
Dayan cited the book in saying that Bout’s firms flew as many as 1,000 flights for U.S. clients (the estimate was based on months of detailed flight logs from Baghdad International Airport obtained by the authors). He also mentioned a grudging 2004 acknowledgement by former Bush administration Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz as evidence of the U.S. government’s complicity with Bout, but adds no new information from Bout himself or any other independent documentation beyond reporting in MOD.
Dayan says that as a result of the embarrassing disclosures, “the government decided it was time to get Viktor Bout. Whether the motivation for this was ‘pay back’ for the embarrassment had caused the Bush government or, for political reasons, to create a scapegoat to deflect attention from the government’s unseemly relationship with the alleged ‘Merchant of Death’–this purported friend of Bin Laden and the Taliban–is not clear. But what is crystal clear is that is served no legitimate law enforcement purpose.”
Dayan also argues that Bout was not guilty of any federal violations and that he was entrapped by the sting, which used undercover informants posing as South American narco-terrorists.
The brief gives no indication of when a ruling from the appeals court is expected. By the time the court decides, Bout’s long-time aide, Richard Chichakli, could be behind bars in New York. Arrested last month in Australia, where he was running a carpet cleaning business under an alias, Chichakli faces extradition to the U.S. for alleged crimes committed with Bout.
—Financial Crime Blog, “Could any of these issues, if accepted by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, result in a reversal of Bout’s conviction? That is certainly a possibility, and we anxiously anticipate the brief of the United States Attorney.”