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"  Alleged international arms merchant Viktor Bout had a bad year in 2010, and 2011 is likely to be even worse. Last year, U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents won a court battle to extradite him from Thailand to New York City. Today, his pretrial hearings began in a New York courtroom is set to begin. (The trial is scheduled to start in mid-September.) Charged with terrorism for his alleged attempt to sell weapons to narco-guerillas in Colombia, he could face 25 years to life in prison.  Bout didn&amp;#039;t know that his career\u2014marked by a mix of luck and ambition, no matter whose version you believe\u2014 took a turn for the worse in Thailand on March 6, 2008, when he met with a man who claimed to be part of the Colombian paramilitary group FARC. The American government designates the FARC as a terrorist group that parlays drug money into weapons aimed at Colombian government troops and the United States equipment, aircraft and personnel that aid the government. According to the criminal indictment, Bout&amp;#039;s FARC contact was actually a DEA informant, only identified in documents as Confidential Source-2. During the March meeting with CS-2, Bout allegedly offered to sell a slew of weapons to the FARC, including anti-aircraft missiles, sniper rifles, anti-tank missiles and armed light aircraft, some. of which would be ferried by cargo planes and dropped by parachute into jungle bases. CS-2 also says Bout produced a map of Colombia so they could mark locations of radar installations. The case is the highest-profile prosecution of a rouge arms merchant in many years and, beyond determining Bout&amp;#039;s guilt or innocence, some pressing questions about the global arms trade could be revealed at the trial. 1) Why did the DEA bag Bout when Interpol, the U.N. and several national law enforcement agencies failed?  Bout has been in the crosshairs of international investigators since the mid-1990s. His name has been linked by Interpol, the United Nations, national intelligence agencies and non-government researchers to arms deals across sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East. He has peddled weapons to the Taliban and Afghan government, supplied both sides of African civil wars and provided dictators with the tools they used to repress their populations and terrify their neighbors. What makes this prosecution different? In a word, drugs. The DEA is well-funded, experienced in the art of the sting operation and has connections among spooks, cops and criminals around the world. Colluding with Latin American guerillas who have a mandate to kill Americans in their nation and destabilize U.S. allies is a great way to get the attention of the U.S. government\u2014and when that group has drug ties, it opens up your operation to attack by an experienced cadre of DEA federales. The DEA laid a trap for Bout, and he obliged them with face-to-face meetings and even supplied handwritten notes regarding the weapons he could offer. He may have felt confident in the deal, because he asked someone to vouch for CS-2 and another informant by identifying them in photos of what the indictment calls &amp;quot;senior officers in the FARC&amp;quot;\u2014but the guy he tapped to verify the identity of the snitches was actually another DEA informant. (Were these confidential sources FARC turncoats or plants? That information is likely to stay secret.) In the indictment, Bout comes off as sloppy or confident\u2014it&amp;#039;s hard to tell which. 2) Is Bulgaria backsliding into the role as irresponsible arms seller?  In the mid-1990s the Bulgarian government earned a rotten reputation for selling weapons to, well, anyone who wanted them. Groups such as Human Rights Watch focused public attention on the issue, noting in 1999 that &amp;quot;Bulgaria&amp;#039;s involvement in troubling arms deals has run the gamut from government-approved weapons transfers to illicit arms deals facilitated by private actors.&amp;quot; It was a bazaar of Soviet-era weaponry, but a series of reforms cleaned up the problem and Bulgaria became somewhat of a success story. Or did it? In the indictment, an unidentified co-conspirator identifies Bulgaria as the source of some very nasty weapons\u2014Russian surface-to-air missiles called Iglas that can blow an airplane (or airliner) out of the sky . But the court documents are vague. They don&amp;#039;t state if government or private dealers are involved. They don&amp;#039;t say which Igla variants were offered\u2014older models could be sold by the government, while newer models could come from suppliers in Russia or elsewhere and just be stored in Bulgaria. Or, perhaps, Bulgarian officials were cooperating with the DEA and helped lay the trap, and the weapons were never really in the offering. Likewise, Bout could have been inflating his arms-dealing prowess. One other note of concern: An earlier case, U.S. versus Monzer al-Kassar, tried in the same New York courthouse, sentenced al-Kassar to 30 years for supporting the FARC. In that case, he called a confidential source from Bulgaria, saying he was working on an arms deal there. It raised red flags, but nothing definitive came from it. The Igla missiles are more central to the Bout case, so public disclosures about Bulgaria could emerge.  3) Will it make a difference? A Bout conviction would be a major boost to arms controllers in the private and government worlds. He is unique because he rose to prominence during a perfect set of conditions\u2014the fall of the Soviet Union, the desire in former Soviet states to sell off the Russian arsenal, war in Africa and the rise of well-funded outlaw groups. His first move\u00AD as an independent businessman\u00AD\u2014by his own account\u00AD\u2014was to buy heavy cargo planes from the Russian military. He used these to ferry supplies on behalf of clients around the world\u00AD. &amp;quot;The circumstances that led to Bout&amp;#039;s empire are not likely to be replicated,&amp;quot; says Matt Schroeder, manager of the Arms Sales Project at the Federation of American Scientists. &amp;quot;To get so many military aircraft at such a low price is highly unique.&amp;quot; The time of the infamous global-spanning arms dealer may be over. &amp;quot;I think the world is more attuned to the kind of continual trafficking that Bout apparently did,&amp;quot; Schroeder says. &amp;quot;Big fish are more likely to get caught now. Having said that, there are plenty of arms dealers around the world right now as a result of inadequate controls. There are a lot of little fish out there causing a lot of damage.&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a6515/viktor-bout-trial-questions/>