The “Merchant of Death” exulted in defiance today after scoring a minimum, 25-year prison term for scheming to kill American military pilots fighting the drug war in South America.
Notorious arms dealer Viktor Bout raised his fists in victory and quoted a famous Russian battle hymn as told a packed Manhattan courtroom: “I love you all. A proud warrior doesn’t surrender!”
Bout, 45, also angrily interrupted when federal prosecutor Brendan McGuire mentioned the massive “arsenal of weapons” that Bout offered to sell to undercover informants posing as Colombian narco-terrorists.
“It’s a lie,” spat Bout, whose infamous exploits inspired the 2005 Nicholas Cage movie “Lord of War.”
McGuire urged a life sentence for the former Soviet military officer, saying Bout’s secretly recorded boast of having done “5,000 operations like this” was “simply chilling.”
But Judge Shira Scheindlin rejected those arguments — and federal guidelines that called for life behind bars — noting that “the bulk of his arms dealing ended more than a decade ago.”
“Yes, he embraced the opportunity to make some money by supplying weapons to a terrorist organization…but he did not seek out such an opportunity based on a long-held antipathy to America or Americans,” she said.
Scheindlin also said it was “noteworthy that he never received any money for his efforts, and never transferred any weapons.”
One of the DEA agents who helped helped snare Bout in 2008 said afterward: “Thank God there’s a statutory minimum.”
Former United Nations arms expert Kathi Lynn Austin, who investigated Bout’s arms trafficking in Africa, said she was “taken aback” and “really disappointed” at his sentence.
“Twenty-five years does not do justice to the enormity of blood on Viktor Bout’s hands,” she said.