It’s going to be a long time before international arms dealer Viktor Bout sees daylight again.
The DEA announced late last week that Bout was sentenced in New York to 25 years in prison for conspiring to sell millions of dollars’ worth of weapons, including hundreds of surface-to-air missiles and over 20,000 AK-47s to the Colombian terrorist group, the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (the “FARC”).
Authorities said that Bout understood the weapons would be used to kill Americans in Colombia.
He was convicted on the charges last November 2.
“The crimes Viktor Bout committed represent the worst case scenario for modern law enforcement–the merger of criminal international narcotics cartels with their terrorism enablers,” DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart said in a statement.
Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara added in a statement: “Viktor Bout has been international arms trafficking enemy number one for many years, arming some of the most violent conflicts around the globe. He was finally brought to justice in an American court for agreeing to provide a staggering number of military grade weapons to an avowed terrorist organization committed to killing Americans. Today’s sentence is a fitting coda for this career arms trafficker of the most dangerous order.”
