Viktor Anatolyevich Bout - probably not the nicest guy you'd ever meet... But is that enough to put him in prison? First of all I want to say that I do not know all the exact details of this story (so I might be wrong), but as far as I'm concerned Mr.Bout was an international arms dealer who supplied regimes such as Charles Taylor's Liberia and perhaps organizations such as Hezbollah. He got the weapons through his numerous connections which he acquired at his former job in the Soviet Union military and intelligence service. Now - what did he allegedly do wrong? He "trafficked arms"... This means he bought them from one person and sold them to another. As far as I'm concerned this is normal capitalist activity! He was fully within his rights to sell the weapons to whomever he wished because they were his private property. Can he be blamed for the way these weapons were later used? Not any more than a shopkeeper can be blamed for a murder committed with a kitchen knife that happened to be bought at his store. Even if he knew the weapons were going to be used in an evil way, that still does not mean he is responsible for how they were used! Only people who commit crimes can be held accountable for them. Under some moral systems what he did might be considered evil and bad, but certainly not criminal.
Sweden sells weapons. I have not heard of any Swedes going to jail for this. The USA gives weapons to Israel (the country which has used them to repeatedly break UN resolutions and (arguably) engage in genocide in Palestine). Nobody in the USA is being punished for giving weapons to an aggressive power! And Mr.Bout was only selling weapons to Liberia; how is this any better or worse?
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