{"id":106517,"date":"2022-09-15T13:20:39","date_gmt":"2022-09-15T11:20:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/?p=106517"},"modified":"2022-09-15T13:20:40","modified_gmt":"2022-09-15T11:20:40","slug":"viktor-bout-for-brittney-grinner-prisoner-exchange-forgets-liberia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/en\/106517-viktor-bout-for-brittney-grinner-prisoner-exchange-forgets-liberia.html","title":{"rendered":"Viktor Bout for Brittney Grinner: a prisoner exchange that forgets Liberia"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Viktor Bout, born in former Soviet Union, was once the world\u2019s most infamous arms dealer. He was accused to have fueled many wars across the world, in particular in Liberia. In 2012 he was sentenced to 25 years in jail by a U.S. court. Now he may be released in exchange of American basketball player Brittney Grinner and an ex-marine detained in Russia.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

According to CNN, the United States has\u00a0proposed a prisoner swap deal with Russia<\/a>\u00a0to release\u00a0Viktor Bout, a convicted arms dealer serving a 25-year term, in exchange for\u00a0Brittney Griner<\/a>, the American basketball player recently\u00a0sentenced to nine years by a court in Moscow<\/a>\u00a0for possessing and smuggling drugs, and Paul Whelan<\/a>, an ex-U.S. marine serving a 16-year jail term for espionage. But Bout\u2019s release would come as a setback for justice in Liberia, warned justice campaigners, security experts and a former UN chief prosecutor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bout had been active in Afghanistan, Colombia, Angola, the former Yugoslavia, Yemen, Somalia and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). But it was his deals with former Liberian president Charles Taylor that capped the former Soviet soldier\u2019s career as the world\u2019s once most notorious gunrunner. Between 1989 and 2003, Bout sold weapons to Liberian warring factions\u2014most notably Taylor\u2014busting several United Nations arms embargoes. During that time, Taylor\u2019s forces and rivals illegally exploited the country\u2019s timber and mineral industries to buy Bout\u2019s weapons. While Bout busted arms embargos to supply Taylor with arms and ammunition in Liberia, Taylor illegally exploited the country\u2019s logs and minerals, and abused its huge shipping registry\u2014the second-largest in the world\u2014to pay Bout. The two men met personally, according to eyewitnesses cited by American journalists Douglas Farah and Stephen Braun in their 2007 book \u201cMerchant of Death: Money, Guns, Planes and the Man Who Makes War Possible.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Taylor, Bout and Kouwenhoven\u2019s partnership<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Viktor Bout\u2019s fleet of ships and airplanes transported the weapons to Liberia, using different pseudonyms and shell companies, transiting through countries like Gambia, Chad, Burkina Faso, Cote d\u2019Ivoire and Niger. (Bout is reported to speak English, Russian, Portuguese, French, Arabic and other languages, a benefit of his training as a translator in the Soviet military.) In 2005, the United States Treasury Department said Bout controlled one of the largest networks of ships worldwide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Taylor ran his illegal timber and arms operations with Bout mainly through\u00a0Guus Kouwenhoven<\/a>, a Dutch businessman who owned Oriental Timber Company (OTC) and ran the largest timber company in Liberia at the time, according to Swiss NGO TRIAL International<\/a>.\u00a0By 2000, the company controlled 1.6 million hectares of forestland, or 42 percent of the country\u2019s concessional forest. In one transaction, OTC paid Taylor US$3,5 million, according to a 2002\u00a0Global Witness<\/a>\u00a0report. A United Nations Panel of Experts on Liberia cited a transfer of US$500,000 by OTC\u2019s parent company in Singapore, Borneo Jaya Pte Ltd to San Air, one of Viktor Bout\u2019s airlines. OTC-chartered ships supplied weapons to Taylor at the Port of Buchanan three times between September and November 2001, the UN experts said. The supplies contained 7,000 boxes of ammunition, 5,000 rocket-propelled grenades, 300 howitzer shells and other equipment,\u00a0according to a\u00a0report<\/a>\u00a0by Farah in the Washington Post. Taylor\u2019s forces protecting the company\u2019s interest committed several human rights abuses. Liberia\u2019s Inquirer newspaper reported in 2000 allegations that the company operated a \u201cprivate prison and barracks.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Guus
Dutch businessman Guus Kouwenhoven (right) is the third actor to be prosecuted, along with former Liberian president Charles Taylor (left), in the judicial saga of arms and timber trafficking in war-torn Liberia.\u00a9 Global Witness<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The downfall<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Some 250,000 people were killed in the Liberian conflict, which spiraled to other countries in the region. The chaos stirred reform in the global trade of minerals and timbers, creating the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme<\/a> and the European Union\u2019s Voluntary Partnership Agreement<\/a>. At the time the UN imposed sanctions<\/a> on Liberian timber (and diamonds) to curtail the carnage. In July 2004, U.S. President George W. Bush issued an executive order<\/a>, freezing the assets of Bout, Taylor, Taylor\u2019s relatives and some members of the Liberian government. Taylor\u2019s ex-wife and now Vice President of Liberia Jewel Howard Taylor, and opposition figure Benoni Urey were also subject to the measure. The assets freeze followed a similar one<\/a> by the UN Security Council earlier that year. It took more than a decade for the assets freeze and travel ban to be lifted<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2003, Taylor was forced into exile by an armed rebellion; in 2012 he was sentenced to 50 years in jail by a UN court for his role in the civil war in Sierra Leone. Kouwenhoven was arrested in The Netherlands in 2005. He was acquitted by a Dutch court in 2008, convicted and sentenced to 19 years in a re-trial in 2017 but he has yet to be extradited by South Africa where he fled after his first trial.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Viktor Bout initially ignored the sanctions and moved on with his illegal arms deals after Taylor\u2019s fall, first surviving an International Criminal Police Organization or Interpol notice, and forgery charges in the Central African Republic. In 2008,\u00a0he was arrested<\/a>\u00a0in an Interpol operation in Bangkok, Thailand.\u00a0Bout had offered to supply weapons to rebels of the\u00a0Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC)<\/a>. It turned out the rebels were actually officers of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and the Royal Thai Police. Initially, American prosecutors\u00a0charged him<\/a>\u00a0with conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals, conspiracy to kill US officers and employees and conspiracy to provide surface-to-air missiles and other weapons to a foreign terrorist organization. But while the U.S. Justice Department pressed for\u00a0Bout\u2019s extradition from Thailand to America<\/a>, prosecutors found that Bout had been negotiating to buy a plane on U.S. soil, which violated the sanctions Washington imposed on him and Taylor.\u00a0Additional charges were filed against him<\/a>: illegal purchase of aircraft, wire fraud and money laundering. He was\u00a0convicted<\/a>\u00a0by a New York court in 2012 and sentenced to 25 years in prison, 15 years of supervised parole and forfeiture of $15 million. The court dismissed the initial charges, saying they only originated from the deceptive operation that led to his arrest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That drew the curtains on the career of Viktor Anatolyevich Bout, born on January 13, 1967 in the former Soviet Union now Tajikistan<\/a>. His life has inspired a number of documentaries, TV series and movies, including \u201cLord of War,\u201d<\/a> which exposed the nature of the international illicit arms trade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The difficult link between arms supply and war crimes<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Viktor Bout was never convicted for his alleged crimes in Liberia \u2013 nor for any war crimes. Prosecutors at the Special Court for Sierra Leone found it difficult to indict Bout, according to Stephen Rapp, former chief prosecutor of the UN court. Rapp said the court faced a number of hurdles including its caseload, the court\u2019s exit strategy, extradition issues and the strength of the evidence against Bout. \u201cThe evidence was quite strong on him providing military assistance, arms to Charles Taylor in the wars in Liberia. But when it came to Sierra Leone, which we were prosecuting, we did not have strong evidence,\u201d Rapp said via email.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was evidence that Taylor supplied weapons to Sierra Leone\u2019s military junta of the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC)<\/a> in 1997 as well as to the rebellion of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) throughout the war (1991-2002) but prosecutors could not tell whether the weapons were used to commit war crimes. \u201cWe couldn\u2019t really relate the arms delivered in 1997 to those crimes. So it was not a strong case against Bout,\u201d Rapp said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Liberia\u2019s failure to prosecute<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In 2009, Liberia\u2019s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC)<\/a> recommended Bout be investigated for his role in the country\u2019s crises. The allegations included illegal arms dealings, illegal extraction of natural resources, aiding and abetting economic crime actors, fraud, and tax evasion. It also recommended Taylor and Kouwenhoven face charges for war and economic crimes.\u00a0But successive governments never prosecuted any of the former warlords living in the country, including some of them being powerful politicians. Former President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, a Nobel Peace Prize winner who was also reprimanded for her alleged role in the civil war, ignore the TRC call. The football legend George Weah, Liberia\u2019s current leader, has also not backed the idea<\/a>. Calls for a Liberian war crimes court have been made repeatedly since Weah was elected president in 2018\u00a0 to no avail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other countries have prosecuted a number of people in connection to Liberia\u2019s wars in the 1990\u2019s and early 2000\u2019s. Alieu Kosiah was convicted<\/a> last year by the Swiss Federal Criminal Court for crimes he committed in the First Liberian Civil War (1989-1996). Mohammed Jabbateh<\/a>, who is serving a 30-year sentence and Thomas Woewiyu, who died awaiting sentencing, were convicted of immigration fraud and perjury in the United States. U.S. prosecutors proved the men had lied about their roles in the First Liberian Civil War. Gibril Massaquoi, a former Sierra Leonean commander was tried and acquitted<\/a> by a court in Finland for alleged crimes in the Second Liberian War (1997-2003). Kunti K., another Liberian former commander will be tried in France next month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But nobody was prosecuted in Liberia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The consequences of VIKTOR Bout\u2019s possible release<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

\u201c[Bout\u2019s] possible release is a dent in the quest for justice in Liberia,\u201d says Hassan Bility, the executive director of Global Justice and Research Project (GJRP), a Liberian NGO which has gathered evidence against many former warlords, including all those prosecuted outside Liberia. \u201cHis imprisonment did bring some relief and justice to Liberia. The US, in line with its interest in justice, at least did something which we appreciate,\u201d Bility adds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Russia wants Viktor Bout, who has not spoken a word to the Americans about an alleged link between his trafficking network and the Russian government. \u201cNo American will be exchanged unless Bout is sent home,\u201d Steve Zissou, his U.S.-based lawyer warned last month. Russian news agency Tass reported last week, that Alexander Darchiev, the director of the Russian Foreign Ministry\u2019s North American Affairs, confirmed the exchange deal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI would urge countries that have suffered the wars armed by Bout, like DRC, Liberia and Sierra Leone, to seek his extradition from the US,\u201d says Patrick Alley, a campaigner at Global Witness. Liberia has had an extradition treaty<\/a> with the United States since 1939.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Arthur Blundell, a security expert who worked with the U.S. government and the UN on Liberia\u2019s forestry reform, says his release would add salt to the country\u2019s wounds. \u201cBout in prison at least meant that he was not able to conduct his arms-trafficking and other illegal operations,\u201d Blundell told Liberian newspaper The DayLight via email. \u201cThis undoubtedly saved thousands of lives in conflict zones around the world.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI will much prefer that he not be traded. I will like for him to serve his complete sentence before he\u2019s released,\u201d said Rapp. \u201cObviously, if there were a war crimes and economic crimes court created [in Liberia], then one could look at the possibility of prosecuting Viktor Bout for the crimes he contributed to in Liberia. Now it will be very hard to obtain his extradition from Putin\u2019s Russia but that wouldn\u2019t keep one from indicting him and bringing pressure to bear. Russia has been building its relationship with Africa in the last decade, and Liberia could use that,\u201d Rapp concluded.<\/p>\n\n\n

\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\t
Recommended reading<\/div>\r\n\t\t\t
\"Aaron<\/div><\/a>\r\n\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\tAaron Weah: \u201cLiberians have been reminded that justice is still possible\u201d\r\n\t\t<\/a>\r\n\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Viktor Bout, born in former Soviet Union, was once the world\u2019s most infamous arms dealer. He was accused to have fueled many wars across the world, in particular in Liberia. In 2012 he was sentenced to 25 years in jail by a U.S. court. Now he may be released in exchange of American basketball player […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":106492,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[3645],"ji_location":[2317,2429,2539],"class_list":["post-106517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-other","tag-prisoner-exchange","ji_location-liberia","ji_location-russia","ji_location-united-states"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nViktor Bout for Brittney Grinner: a prisoner exchange that forgets Liberia - JusticeInfo.net<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Viktor Bout, born in former Soviet Union, was once the world\u2019s most infamous arms dealer. He was accused to have fueled many wars across the world, in particular in Liberia. In 2012 he was sentenced to 25 years in jail by a U.S. court. 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