Reputed Global Arms Dealer Arrested

He promised an immediate delivery of 100 Russian Igla missiles -- a standard item in the Russian army -- plus thousands of assault rifles. For $5 million extra, he agreed to drop the items into the Colombian jungle using several hundred combat parachutes, according to the complaint. Bout also promised, through Smulian, to provide helicopters "that could wipe out" other helicopters, flight training, and armor-piercing rockets, the complaint says.

Several analysts familiar with his operation say he may have gone to Thailand because he preferred to deal with customers in person. Smulian was also arrested.

The list of Bout's alleged customers since the early 1990s stretches across at least four continents, with a focus on Africa, Western law enforcement officials and human rights groups say. The Treasury Department accused him of supplying armaments to both the Taliban and its al-Qaeda allies in Afghanistan before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, while also providing weapons to the opposing Northern Alliance.

In Zaire, now known as Congo, Bout allegedly supplied arms to rebels fighting then-dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, turned around and helped Seko flee the country, then flew humanitarian cargo into the devastated nation.

"One of the most fascinating things is his ability not only to supply different sides of a conflict, but to live and tell about it with no one killing him," said Douglas Farah, a former Washington Post reporter and co-author of a 2007 book about Bout, "Merchant of Death."

Other alleged customers over the years have included then-Liberian despot Charles Taylor, Unita rebels in Angola and the Revolutionary United Front in Sierra Leone. Cargo companies connected to Bout were also linked to hundreds of supply flights into Iraq for private contractors and the U.S. military early in the Iraq war. The complaint even states that, in the 1990s, Bout sought to drop "crates and boxes over Chechnya," the site of a bitter secessionist rebellion inside Russia.

The Treasury Department sanctioned Bout in 2004 for alleged war profiteering because of his ties to Taylor, and it froze the assets of 30 companies and four individuals linked to Bout in 2006. He is also accused of violating United Nations arms embargoes in numerous conflicts and has been subject to a U.N. travel ban.

Smulian outlined the pressures on Bout in his e-mail message to the two DEA informants, which was detailed in yesterday's criminal complaint. "All assets cash and kind frozen, total value is around 6 Bn USD, and of course no ability to journey anywhere other than home territories," Smulian wrote. "Listed on the US black list. . . . All access and communications monitered."

Bout has periodically granted media interviews to deny the voluminous allegations against him. In a 2002 interview with the Echo of Moscow, he said he does "aviation lifts. This is my main business."

"It sounds more like a Hollywood blockbuster," he said of the al-Qaeda arms-sales allegations. He even critiqued the "Lord of War," which reportedly used a Bout cargo plane. "I am sorry for Nicolas Cage," he told MosNews in 2006. "It's a bad movie."

Correspondent Peter Finn in Moscow and staff researcher Robert E. Thomason in Washington contributed to this report.