Treasury Department site on Bout:
http://www.treas.gov/press/releases/reports/0426_bout_designation_chart.pdf
Center for Public Integrity report on Bout:
http://www.publicintegrity.org/bow/report.aspx?aid157
Yes we know. And in a gray world, has helped us many times in Afghanistan.
Viktor Bout's Excellent Bosnian Adventure
By Douglas Farah
It seems as though the fingerprints of Viktor Bout, arms trafficker extraordinaire, can be found in most places that have had trouble in recent years. The most recent intelligence reports I received come from Bosnia, and show Bout has been an active partner of Mr. Hasan Cengic, the head of radical Islam in Bosnia and key organized crime figure. Interesting how Bout shows up in numerous Muslim-related conflicts, often where U.S. policy makers are having a particularly difficult time in getting weapons to one side or the other.
The paper trail left by Bout in Bosnia makes it hard to discern exactly what he was up to there, but in March 2001 he was leasing two Illyushin Il-72s from BIO Air Services, and had them based in Sarjah, UAE. Cengic, on the U.S. Treasury Department's list of banned individuals and chief arms provider to the Bosnia Muslims during the Bosnia conflict (where al Qaeda and other radical elements, led by Cengic, took control of the lucrative arms trade), controls BIO Air. The European intelligence report says that BIO Air leased two of its aircraft to Bout after illegally importing them into Bosnia in the first place. Before the aircraft were owned by BIO Air they belonged to Atlas Iran. Cengic spent much of the Bosnia war in Iran and worked as an Iranian intelligence agent.
Wikipedia:
Hasan Čengić (born August 30, 1957 in Foča, Bosnia and Herzegovina) is the former Deputy Prime Minister and Defense Minister of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. A Muslim cleric,[1] he was convicted together with the future president Alija Izetbegovic by the communist regime of Yugoslavia in 1983 and served 5 years of a 10 year sentence.He is a member of a powerful clan headed by his father, Halid Čengić, the main logistics expert in the Bosnian army and a senior official, with his sons, in Bosnia's Agencija za Informacije I Dokumentaciju (AID) intelligence agency. Hasan Čengić has travelled frequently to Tehran since 1983 and has been deeply involved in Iranian arms shipments to Bosnia. During the Bosnian War, he lived in Tehran and Istanbul. According to Austrian police, Čengić was on the supervisory board of the Third World Relief Agency (TWRA), a Sudan-based, phoney humanitarian organization connected to Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda terrorist network. Čengić's involvement was confirmed by the TWRA's director, Elfatih Hassanein.
Well informed sources in Sarajevo claim that only Hasan addressed Izetbegovic with 'ti' [second person singular, used as an informal form of address] while all the others addressed him as 'Mr. President,'" a sign of his extraordinary degree of intimacy with the president.
As minister for refugee resettlement after the conflict, he has been accused of intimidating Serb refugees returning to their homes, but never convicted.
Čengić is the business partner of Russian mobster, arms dealer and former KGB officer Viktor Bout, nicknamed "the Merchant of Death".[2][3] In May 2006, when 200,000 AK-47 assault rifles went missing in transit from Bosnia to Iraq, one of Bout's airlines was the carrier.[4]
How is it that the slugs of the DEA are properly involved in arms trafficking??? And how is it that the U.S. government is assuming any sort of jurisdiction over a foreign national in a foreign country doing business in ANOTHER foreign country? Maybe ol' Viktor Bout is a sleazeball and should be strung up by the cajones, but just how is that OUR business if he has not tried to sell arms to Democrats in THIS country???? Enquiring minds want to know!