BANGKOK - Thai police received court permission Saturday to retain custody of a reputed Russian arms dealer dubbed the "Merchant of Death" who was arrested in a U.S.-led sting operation that lured him from his home in Moscow.
Viktor Bout, 41, was arrested Thursday at a luxury hotel in Bangkok and held on suspicion of engaging with and supporting terrorist groups.
The Bangkok Criminal Court authorized his continued detention while an investigation continues. Suspects may be held for up to 84 days without being formally charged for trial.
U.S. officials tipped off Thai authorities earlier this week that Bout was expected to arrive from Moscow on Thursday to complete what he thought was an arms deal with leftist guerrillas from Colombia, said Thai police Lt. Gen. Adisorn Nontree.
Bout has remained mum in appearances before the press. But he has told Thai authorities that he came to Thailand as a normal tourist, said police Col. Warayut Supawat.
Thai and U.S. authorities both said Friday they could file terrorism charges against Bout, and a war crimes prosecutor also expressed a desire to try him for allegedly fueling African civil wars.
Agents of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration had led Bout to believe he was dealing with representatives of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, according to U.S. officials. The U.S. considers the rebels, who have been fighting Colombia's government for more than 40 years and are said to traffic in cocaine, a terrorist group.
Bout and associate Andrew Smulian, who is still at large, face a U.S. charge of "conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization."
The U.S. is seeking Bout's extradition, but for now he will remain in Thailand, where officials said they were investigating whether he used the country as a base to negotiate a weapons deal with terrorists.
If convicted, Bout would face a sentence of 10 years in prison on the potential Thai charge, and 15 years in the U.S.
A high-ranking U.S. government official with knowledge of Bout's history said the Russian did business in the past with the FARC as well as with insurgency groups, dictators and terror groups in southwest Asia and Africa. The official agreed to discuss Bout only if not quoted by name.
A U.N. travel ban imposed on Bout cited his support for the Liberian regime of former President Charles Taylor in its effort to destabilize neighboring Sierra Leone and gain illicit access to that West African nation's diamonds.
Stephen Rapp, chief prosecutor of a U.N.-backed war crimes tribunal, the Special Court for Sierra Leone, said Friday he would like to put Bout on trial. "Would we like to get our hands on Bout? Very much," he said.
Rapp said atrocities against civilians and other abuses committed in the wars that wracked Sierra Leone and elsewhere in West and Central Africa were mainly the fault of rebel forces and political leaders.
"But individuals like Viktor Bout are also responsible and it's important that they also face justice," Rapp said.
Rapp said he would have a good case against Bout for aiding and abetting crimes against humanity and war crimes in Sierra Leone, based on the Russian's arms shipments on behalf of Taylor and the Sierra Leone rebel group, the Revolutionary United Front.
Weapons were delivered into the war zone "at the time they were conducting operations with names like 'No living thing,' and being paid for those shipments with diamonds dug by slave labor," Rapp said.
In October 2006, President Bush issued an executive order freezing the assets of Bout and several associates and warlords in Congo and barring Americans from doing business with them.
They were accused of violating international laws involving targeting of children or violating a ban on sales of military equipment to Congo.
According to the DEA's conspiracy complaint against Bout, his partner Smulian told the undercover agents that Bout's assets worth a claimed $6 billion had been frozen.
Bout's business is said to have been centered around a fleet of transport aircraft owned and operated by several closely held companies.
In 2006, Associated Press reporters and photographers witnessed a Kyrgyzstan-registered Ilyushin-76 land at Somalia's Mogadishu International Airport when it was under the control of the Council of Islamic Courts, a group that the U.S. government has linked to al-Qaida.
The aircraft was operated by an air cargo company based in the United Arab Emirates that was allegedly controlled by Bout.
A U.N. commission in charge of monitoring the arms embargo on Somalia later determined the plane delivered shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles to the radical Islamic group.
Bout is believed to have used his fleet of planes and contacts from his days in the Soviet air force to buy weapons in eastern Europe and deliver them to combatants around the world.
