Stopping the Trade in Death
On a dark November morning in 2004, I woke up in my bungalow overlooking Lake Kivu, tense with anticipation. Our small United Nations team was about to undertake a surprise inspection of three airfields in eastern Congo, notorious for smuggling operations.
With the backing of U.N. peacekeeping forces and a U.N. Security Council mandate, we searched almost every incoming and outgoing aircraft that day. By evening, we had the evidence to link several aviation front companies to the international arms trafficker Viktor Bout. They were subsequently added to a U.N. list of entities whose assets are to be frozen.
Flash forward seven years to a federal courtroom in New York where Bout is being tried on various charges of arms smuggling and terrorism (he was found guilty on Nov.… Seguir leyendo »