Viktor Bout, arms dealer | The “merchant of death” still haunts Africa

He trafficked arms for the rebels in Angola. He led a criminal group that smuggled cobalt out of the Congo. It delivered missiles, machine guns and military helicopters to Liberia, while this country was in the midst of civil war.

But convicted Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, released by the United States on December 8 in exchange for American basketball star Brittney Griner, has never been held accountable for any of the acts that have been documented over the years. years by United Nations experts. Instead, he was arrested in an undercover operation in Bangkok in 2008 by US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) informants posing as Colombian revolutionaries, then convicted of conspiring to kill Americans.

While he was hailed on his return to Russia as a “wonderful person”, many African victims of the conflicts he armed continue to suffer trauma and are awaiting some form of justice.

“This guy is responsible for killing, indirectly, thousands of people,” said Hassan Bility, director of the Global Justice and Research Project, an organization that documents the atrocities of war in his country, Liberia.

A developed distribution network

According to the United Nations, Viktor Bout had a network of more than 50 planes that were constantly involved in “weapons shipments from Eastern Europe to African war zones”.

Viktor Bout has yet to respond to an interview request. But speaking to New York Times in 2003, Viktor Bout first said he didn’t know what he was delivering were weapons. Then he changed his mind.

One of the war zones where the United Nations reported arms shipments was Liberia. Viktor Bout supplied arms to Charles Taylor, former president of Liberia, said Stephen J. Rapp, who as prosecutor of the United Nations-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone led the prosecution against Charles Taylor, who was eventually convicted of war crimes for the atrocities committed in Sierra Leone.

Among these is the 1992 Operation Octopus, in which child and teenage soldiers besieged the Liberian capital and thousands of people were killed in a month.

“The way Charles Taylor fought his wars was not to go and shoot the other side’s fighters,” Mr. Rapp said. It was through these violent acts against the populations. And so, if you were supplying weapons to Charles Taylor, you had a good reason to think that they were going to be used in this type of combat “to make them fearful”, as he put it. »

The Horrors of Liberia’s Civil War

For Joshua Kulah, who was 9 when Liberia’s second civil war ended in 2003, that fear is etched in his memory. Joshua Kulah, now a 28-year-old lawyer, says he had friends who were forced by soldiers and rebels to become child soldiers, and cousins ​​and friends who died on the front line. He remembers his parents hiding him whenever armed men came to the neighborhood, in case he was kidnapped and forced to fight too.

Mr Kulah said he was “indifferent” to Mr Bout’s release because he blamed the people who used the weapons, not those who sold them.

Hassan Bility said his organization would begin building a comprehensive dossier on the arms dealer’s activities in Liberia, which could be used in a case against him, “and then wait” for him to leave Russia so he could be extradited or charged elsewhere.

Almost everyone in Liberia has suffered in one way or another. One woman, now 44, remembers the war to which Mr. Bout supplied arms as “simple deprivation”. Her family had no food, she said, and had to walk for hours to find something to eat.

This woman’s family was already traumatized by the events of the first civil war (1989-1997), in which her uncle was killed by rebel forces fighting for Prince Johnson, another warlord. Mr Johnson is best known for ordering the assassination of President Samuel Doe in 1990 and for drinking beer while watching him being tortured. But today, Mr Johnson is a powerful senator who enjoys such political popularity that he regularly plays the role of kingmaker in Liberian presidential elections.

The woman whose uncle was killed wanted to remain anonymous, 32 years later, for fear of repercussions. Mr Johnson’s political power and the fear he still inspires are part of why thousands of victims of Liberia’s civil wars have never received justice, Mr Bility said.

War crimes tribunal demanded

He said Mr Bout’s release was “difficult”, but he would not criticize the US for it, as Washington has repeatedly tried to hold the Liberian rebels who fled there to account. low, while hundreds of war criminals returning to Liberia are free.

“The United States – when it comes to justice – has done more” than Liberia, he said. “Many, many, many more. »

For years, Liberian survivors of wars, human rights advocates and some politicians have pushed for the establishment of a war crimes tribunal – something recommended by the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. But successive governments have opposed it.

Among the Commission’s recommendations: investigate Mr. Bout.

At first, George Weah, the former international soccer star who is now president of this West African country, supported the creation of this tribunal. But, recently, he has been silent on the subject.

As African leaders gathered this week in Washington for a high-level summit, Mr. Bility asked President Joe Biden to talk to Mr. Weah about establishing such a tribunal.

Mr. Rapp, the prosecutor, said Mr. Bout’s conviction had been much like that of Al Capone, the Chicago mobster who was eventually jailed for tax evasion – not murder, trafficking liquor or racketeering.

“I would have preferred someone other than Viktor Bout to be traded,” Rapp said. But the fact that he has served almost 15 years of his 25-year sentence is some comfort. Al Capone only made eight. »

This article was originally published in the New York Times.