by Patrick Radden Keefe, Taking Note
As tensions intensified between the United States and Russia over the crisis in South Ossetia, one person who has no doubt been watching the story very closely is the notorious gun runner Viktor Bout, who is currently sitting in a jail cell in Bangkok. Known as the “Merchant of Death,” Bout is widely believed to have been the most prolific smuggler of black market weapons during the 1990s, who flouted UN embargoes to fuel the bloody conflicts in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and other African countries. Bout played a clever game of jurisdictional arbitrage through much of his career, hopscotching from one country to another, always a step ahead of national laws and law enforcement. Eventually he settled in Moscow, where despite an Interpol red notice and the fact that he was wanted in numerous countries, he lived openly, and with impunity, going so far as to grant an interview for a cover story in the New York Times Magazine.
