MOSCOW. July 25 (Interfax) - The lawyers of Russian businessman Viktor Bout have admitted that their client was actually involved in arms trade, Kommersant daily reports.
"The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York has held pre-trial hearings of the case of Viktor Bout, who is charged in the United States with conspiring to murder American citizens and attempting to sell a major batch of arms to the radical Colombian grouping FARC. At the hearings, Bout's lawyers for the first time officially recognized that their client had sold arms," the newspaper reported on Sunday.
The daily says that in one of his petitions filed to the court at the end of May, Bout's lawyer Albert Dayan stressed that the businessman's persecution had been organized at the initiative of the National Security Council or the White House and that the main purpose of the trial was revenge "for placing the Bush administration in an awkward position."
Kommersant says that at the latest hearing Dayan expanded on the subject. "The American leadership decided that Bout was a very bad guy," he said and insisted on summoning former Deputy National Security Advisor Juan Zarate as witness. The lawyer believes that an interview that Zarate gave to CBS confirmed the ill-meaning intentions of the White House.
The daily says that Zarate admitted that he regarded as a mistake a contract for the transportation of vehicles and weaponry for the U.S. force in Iraq with a company that Bout had controlled. "As a result, the Russian businessmen got access to equipment used by Americans, and the White House got into serious trouble," Kommersant says.
Bout was arrested in Thailand under a U.S. arrest warrant in 2008 and was extradited to the U.S. in 2010 after spending some time in a Thai jail pending trial. In the U.S., he has been charged with arms trafficking, conspiring to kill U.S. citizens and supporting terrorism.
The 44-year-old Russian has always dismissed all charges pressed against him.
If found guilty, Bout could be imprisoned for 25 years to life, in line with U.S. law.
Bout's trial should begin on October 11.