'Merchant of Death' still on the run

[formercia]

Source: BBC

By Mark Doyle
BBC World Affairs Correspondent

The name Victor Bout first came on my radar in the late 1990s when, in my job as a BBC reporter in Africa, I found myself spending an inordinate amount of time with soldiers.

I spent time with scruffy rebels in the Guinean bush and smart Indian UN peacekeepers; I sought out a United Nations commander at a golf club in Liberia one Sunday morning and met a Nigerian general later the same day in a hotel bar; I counted British majors, Nigerian colonels and South African mercenaries as my friends.

Almost all of them had heard about a (to me) mysterious man called Victor Bout, a Russian businessman who apparently traded in Africa and beyond.

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Read more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6991487.stm

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Remember the missing guns caper?