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BANGKOK - Viktor Bout, an international arms dealer dubbed the "Merchant of Death", was arrested in Thailand on Thursday accused of trying to buy weapons for Colombian rebels, Thai police said.
Bout, the target of an international arrest warrant and US sanctions, was picked up at a Bangkok hotel after entering Thailand on February 29. Police were searching for an associate.
He was attempting "to procure weapons for Colombia's FARC rebels", the Thai police said in an arrest report.
The leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, are fighting a four-decade-old insurgency against the Bogota government.
Bout has run a network of air cargo companies in the Middle East, Africa, Eastern Europe and the United States.
According to the United Nations and the US Treasury Department, he has sold or brokered arms that have helped fuel wars in Afghanistan, Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Sudan.
The US Treasury Department seized his cargo planes and froze other assets in 2006.
Bout - a former Soviet air force officer born in Tajikistan in 1967, according to Russian media reports - has repeatedly denied the allegations.
Stephan Rapp, Chief Prosecutor at Sierra Leone's UN-backed war crimes court, welcomed the arrest: "It's very good news for justice and for international law enforcement."
He accused Bout of using his international network to smuggle arms through neighbouring Liberia to fuel Sierra Leone's 1991-2002 civil war, which killed more than 50,000 people.
Rapp said Bout could be indicted by Sierra Leone's Special Court, which is currently due to close in 2009, if international donors came forward to provide funding.
"These kinds of cases need to be made against not just the politicians and the fighters, but the people who provide weapons of war," he said. "This is a great opportunity."
Rapp said Bout could also be a witness in the continuing trial of former Liberian president Charles Taylor in The Hague. Taylor is accused of crimes against humanity for his role in Sierra Leone's civil war.
- REUTERS
