Thanks to Chris for pointing me to Victor Bout’s personal website. Bout, arms trader extraordinaire, has been in prison in Thailand. The US is trying to have him extradited, but increasingly it is looking like this might not happen.
Bout’s website uses different pages to counter the charges against him. Either he writes using the royal “we” (as in “Please use email to send us your questions“), or he has a team of web developers.
The front page says:
In reality Victor Bout is not, and never was an arms dealer, nor had he a business empire that spanned the globe. So what was the actual business of Victor Bout, and how many aircraft did he own, who were the employees, and where did the business operate? Here’re the facts about Aircess, and the other ventures of Victor Bout.
Yet sadly the links associated with “Aircess” and “other ventures” do not work.
The documents page has a subcategory called “Stories and Fairytales,” under which he links to stuff by one of my favorite reporters/authors, Douglas Farah.
I mock the site, but it’s impressively comprehensive. The documents page links to tons of the legal documents related to his extradition case. A video page links to YouTube videos that argue there is a conspiracy against him.
I checked this site you are talking about, and it is full of all kinds of info. Have you seen the latest document on Viktor’s site–a letter from Colombian Ministry of Foreign Affairs? It seems like United States is still fighting back with full force, but doesn’t the case look even more political in nature with another government getting involved? Besides that, Colombian government acknoweledges in its letter that Viktor Bout actually sold arms to Colombian rebels–but that did not happen in reality, did it? I thought it was a stint operation.
Here’s the link to this recent doc (choose English/Spanish version):
http://www.victorbout.com/NewsandUpdates.htm#Colombia_Letter
With respect to Aircess, I did a search on Google, and there it was–a full website at http://www.aircess.com If the site doesn’t come up initially, try to refresh a few times–the search engine might be blocking (as per Viktor’s note on the site).
Worthy to mention, that Guus Kouwenhoven, a Dutch businessman who had close ties with Charles Taylor in Liberia (and is also mentioned as one of the biggest arms dealers as per the same UN reports that mention Viktor Bout), got fully acquitted and removed from all sanctions lists in 2008 when Hague Appeals Court found the evidence used to convict Mr.Kouwenhoven doubtfull and unreliable. Interesting case, especially after UN proclaimed Kouwenhoven to be illegal arms trafficker and supporter of war crimes in Liberia.
Here are the links:
1- commentary on Dutch Judiciary and Supreme Court of Netherlands
http://www.rechtspraak.nl/Actualiteiten/Press+release+Kouwenhoven.htm
2-actual court documents in Kouwenhoven’s case
http://www.haguejusticeportal.net/eCache/DEF/6/412.html
If anybody out there has something interesting, put it out–love to hear it!
Thank you for this comment, Henry. I apologize for not approving it until now. This comment was mistakenly put in my spam email folder.
With regards to your question about Colombia–I think Bout has armed FARC rebels. He was caught in a sting where a US guy posed as a FARC representative, but I have heard allegations that prior to this he had armed FARC guys.
Thanks also for the Aircess link.
Best,
Shelby
The links are broken
1- commentary on Dutch Judiciary and Supreme Court of Netherlands
http://www.rechtspraak.nl/Actualiteiten/Press+release+Kouwenhoven.htm
2-actual court documents in Kouwenhoven’s case
http://www.haguejusticeportal.net/eCache/DEF/6/412.html