Viktor Bout: Who is the Merchant of Death?

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Viktor Bout, one of the world's most infamous arms dealers, has been released from US custody as part of a prisoner exchange with US basketball star Brittney Griner.

Griner had been in custody since February after Moscow airport officials found cannabis oil in her luggage while she was returning to the US after playing in Russi

Rumours had circulated in US media for months that senior state department officials had sought to secure Griner's release in exchange for the arms dealer's freedo

So notorious are the exploits of the former Soviet air force officer that they inspired a Hollywood film, and garnered him an impressively fearsome nicknam

But who is the man known as the Merchant of Deat

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Bout was extradited from Thailand to the US in 2010, after a sting operation by the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) two years earlier

Agents from the DEA posed as potential buyers from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as Farc. That group - which has since disbanded - was classified as a terrorist organisation by the United State

Bout claimed he was simply an entrepreneur with a legitimate international transport business, wrongly accused of trying to arm South American rebels - the victims of US political machination

But a jury in New York didn't believe his stor

He was sentenced to 25 years in prison in April 2012 after being found guilty of conspiracy to kill Americans and US officials, delivering anti-aircraft missiles and aiding a terrorist organisatio

His three-week trial heard that Bout had been told the weapons would be used to kill US pilots working with Colombian officials. Prosecutors said he replied: "We have the same enemy

Bout - a Russian national born in Soviet-ruled Tajikistan - began his career in air transport in the early 1990s, after the fall of the USS

According to a 2007 book - Merchant of Death, by security experts Douglas Farah and Stephen Braun - Bout built up his business using military planes left on the airfields of the collapsing Soviet empire in the early 1990WATCH HERE

s.R.."n.y.s.s..neh?e.m.a.mpire in the early 1990s.