REFILE-Russian arms dealer to face trial in Thailand - police
07 Mar 2008 04:57:27 GMT Source: Reuters
(Refiles to correct day in paragraph 1) BANGKOK, March 7 (Reuters) - Viktor Bout, an alleged arms dealer dubbed the "Merchant of Death" and arrested in a U.S. sting operation in Thailand, will stand trial in Bangkok before extradition is considered, police said on Friday. Bout, a former Soviet air force officer, has been charged in New York with conspiring to sell weapons worth millions of dollars to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. The United States, which has given billions of dollars in military aid to Colombia to fight the Marxist rebels and drug cartels, plans to seek Bout's extradition. "Bout has to be tried in Thailand before extradition," Police Lieutenant General Adisorn Nonsee told a news conference where Bout was paraded for the media, guarded by heavily-armed Thai police commandos. Bout and an associate, Andrew Smulian, are charged with agreeing to sell weapons to the FARC including surface-to-air missile systems and armor-piercing rocket launchers between November 2007 and last month. Smulian, 46, was charged with conspiring to provide material support to a terrorist organization. Smulian's whereabouts were not immediately clear. If convicted in the United States, both men face a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison. The FARC is fighting a four-decade-old insurgency against the Colombian government and is designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department. (Reporting by Nopporn Wong-Anan; Editing by Darren Schuettler and Sanjeev Miglani)
Colombian residents in Argentina and Argentine leftist activists demonstrate against the recent attack by Colombian troops on a FARC camp in Ecuador that killed some 20 rebels, in Buenos Aires March ...
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