WARNING: This is Version 1 of my old archive, so Photos will NOT work and many links will NOT work. But you can find articles by searching on the Titles. There is a lot of information in this archive. Use the SEARCH BAR at the top right. Prior to December 2012; I was a pro-Christian type of Conservative. I was unaware of the mass of Jewish lies in history, especially the lies regarding WW2 and Hitler. So in here you will find pro-Jewish and pro-Israel material. I was definitely WRONG about the Boeremag and Janusz Walus. They were for real.
Original Post Date: 2002-03-07 Posted By: Jan
From the News Archives of: WWW.AfricanCrisis.Org
Date & Time Posted: 3/7/2002 12:41:53 PM
Russian Arms Trafficker to Africa
Source: http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2002/03…br>
Thursday, Mar. 7, 2002. Page 8
Hand Over Bout!
By Lee Wolosky
President Vladimir Putin should immediately render Viktor Bout to international law enforcement authorities. Bout, an alleged arms dealer, is now wanted on an Interpol warrant for trial in Belgium. He and his associates have reportedly supplied arms to the Taliban and al-Qaida, some of which are now presumably being used against U.S and other allied forces in the eastern Afghan town of Gardez.
Putin should act because Viktor Bout’s organization — and groups like it — threaten common Russian and U.S. security interests no less than terrorists in Georgia’s Pankisi Gorge. And it is clear that Russian law enforcement agencies will not execute the Interpol warrant without Putin’s intervention.
On Feb. 28, the same day that Bout walked into the studios of Ekho Moskvy to maintain his innocence in an interview, a spokesman for Interpol’s Russian bureau was suggesting that Bout was not even in Russia.
The evidence compiled against Bout is overwhelming. His group is probably the largest arms trafficking network in the world. Besides Afghanistan, it delivers large and small arms to all of Africa’s major conflict zones, according to at least four separate United Nations reports. It has worked on behalf of the Abu Sayyaf Group in the Philippines and Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, according to The Washington Post. And it operates or has operated criminal cells in the United Arab Emirates, Belgium, Russia, the United States, Rwanda, South Africa, Swaziland, Uganda, Angola and Liberia, among other places, according to international investigators.
In fueling the death and destruction of innocents, this pernicious criminal organization offends Russian and American values. And in arming rogues and terrorists, it undermines our common objectives in promoting international security and the rule of law.
Far beyond Bout, of course, Russia and the United States face common security threats resulting from unchecked criminality. These threats affect important national security interests of both states.
Since the end of the Cold War, powerful Russian and other international organized crime groups — some with thousands of members — have emerged on the world stage. These stateless actors operate in many jurisdictions, frequently between the seams of existing enforcement and control regimes. They are engaged in numerous forms of criminal activity, ranging from the trafficking of drugs, persons and arms to large-scale money laundering, financial crime and embezzlement.
Russian criminal groups are also involved in the smuggling of nuclear, radioactive and possibly biological materials, and have known associations with international terrorist organizations. Accordingly, they are in a position to deliver weapons of mass destruction to groups dedicated to the destruction of the United States and Russia. In the last three years alone, Russian authorities report that they have broken up 601 nuclear-smuggling deals, many involving established criminal syndicates.
Russian organized crime threatens Russia most directly. As the Russian people know best, in recent years criminal syndicates have consistently overwhelmed weak governmental institutions and fledgling private enterprises. Consequently, they are jeopardizing Russia’s political and economic transition. In this regard, they also threaten core U.S. interests, because the United States has vital security interests in the successful transition of Russia — a country with thousands of nuclear weapons — into a stable, prosperous and Western-oriented democracy.
As the case of Viktor Bout makes clear, Russian organized crime groups also threaten U.S. and Russian interests outside of Russia. Indeed, they are fueling regional instability, undermining UN sanction regimes and participating in the drug trade across the planet. They are, obviously, not alone in these endeavors: Nigerians, Colombians, British, Belgians, Albanians, Chinese and Americans, among many others, are often just as culpable, if not more so.
To create a stable international order, the United States and Russia need to address post-Cold War threats together. They now should look beyond military operations in Afghanistan and broaden the targeted and effective intelligence and law enforcement cooperation that has taken hold since Sept. 11. Recent steps toward the entry into force of a bilateral Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty and the establishment of a Russian financial intelligence unit are steps in the right direction. Russian participation in the international take-down of Viktor Bout’s organization — now in full swing — would be another.
———————————————————————
Lee Wolosky, former director for transnational threats on the National Security Council under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, is an adjunct fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. He contributed this comment to The Moscow Times.