Viktor Bout, the arms dealer who was sent back to Russia in a prisoner swap agreed by Joe Biden, is now reportedly supplying weapons to the Houthis.
Bout, dubbed “the merchant of death”, is trying to broker the sale of arms to the Iran-backed group, which is attacking commercial ships in the Red Sea and firing missiles and drones at Israel, sources told The Wall Street Journal.
After being jailed in the United States, two years ago he was swapped for the US basketball star Brittney Griner.
Citing an unnamed European security source and other anonymous sources familiar with the matter, the WSJ wrote that Bout is now dealing arms again.
“When Houthi emissaries went to Moscow in August to negotiate the purchase of $10 million [£7.7 million] worth of automatic weapons, they encountered a familiar face: the mustachioed Bout,” the newspaper reported, citing its sources.
The potential arms transfers are yet to be delivered, the WSJ reported. They stop short of the sale of Russian anti-ship or anti-air missiles that could pose a significant threat to US military efforts to protect international shipping from the Houthis’ attacks, it added.
The Kremlin and Russia’s defence ministry did not immediately respond to a request to comment.
Life inspired Hollywood film
The WSJ reported that Steve Zissou, a New York attorney who represented Bout in the US, had declined to discuss whether his client had met with the Houthis, and that a Houthi spokesman declined to comment.
After returning to Russia following the prisoner swap in December 2022, Bout, 57, joined the Kremlin-loyal ultra-nationalist Liberal Democratic Party, but has since kept a relatively low public profile.
Bout was one of the world’s most wanted men before his 2008 arrest in Thailand on multiple charges related to arms trafficking.
He was extradited to the US and, in 2012, convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison by a court in Manhattan.
For almost two decades, Bout was one of the world’s most notorious arms dealers, selling weapons to rogue states, rebel groups and murderous warlords in Africa, Asia and South America.
His life helped to inspire a Hollywood film, 2005’s Lord of War, starring Nicolas Cage as Yuri Orlov, an arms dealer loosely based on Bout.
