With international arms dealer Victor Bout behind bars in Bangkok, many world leaders are squirming over revelations of his client list. The arrest on 6 March of year-old Viktor Anatol'evich Bout in Bangkok continues to shine a most unwelcome for some spotlight on the shadowy world of the international arms trade, and will doubtless leave many governments, including the US, scrambling for cover as they attempt to limit the fallout from his arrest.
Bout was taken into custody in a conference room on the 27th floor of Bangkok's five-star Sofitel hotel after reportedly attempting to sell armaments to Colombia's FARC guerrillas.
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Smulian, apparently spirited out of Thailand, was charged with conspiring to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization, according to the Economist magazine. Smulian was detained without bail. Prosecutors did not say where or when he had been arrested, Agence France Presse reported.
One of Bout's three lawyers, Yan Dasgupta, claimed that, "Some [US] governmental officials at the moment of his detention tried to actually send him to United States without following proper extradition procedure prescribed by the law.
He was doing everything in his power including physical resistance not to fly to the US," according to Profile magazine. Dasgupta confirmed that Smulian had been in Bangkok at the time of Bout's arrest, telling journalists, "We don't really understand what happened to Mr Smulian. It is quite interesting and surprising and strengthens my argument on Bout being forcibly sent to the United States," AFP quoted him as saying.
