Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, swapped for WNBA star Brittney Griner, is widely known outside the country as the “Merchant of Death” who fueled some of the world’s worst conflicts.
FILE - Alleged Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout looks out from inside the detention center while waiting for a hearing on extradition to the United States charge at criminal court on May 19, 2009 in Bangkok, Thailand. Russia has freed WNBA star Brittney Griner on Thursday in a dramatic high-level prisoner exchange, with the U.S. releasing notorious Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout.
Russia had pressed for Bout’s release for years and as speculation grew about such a deal, the upper house of parliament opened a display of paintings he made in prison – whose subjects ranged from Soviet dictator Josef Stalin to a kitten. Griner, who was arrested at Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport in February after vape canisters containing cannabis oil were found in her luggage, was sentenced in August to nine years in prison. Washington protested her sentence as disproportionate, and some observers suggested that trading an arms merchant for someone jailed for a small amount of drugs would be a poor deal.
“From the resonant Bout case, a real ‘hunt’ by Americans for Russian citizens around the world has unfolded,” the government newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta wrote last year.
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