GUARDIAN NEWS SERVICE

By Julian Borger

The man popularly known as the Merchant of Death for masterminding what is alleged to be the world's biggest gun-running business made his first public remarks on Monday in a Thai courtroom since being arrested in March to face extradition to the US on terrorism-related charges.

Viktor Bout has spent his 16-year business career trying to keep out of the limelight, but he has emerged as a legendary figure, the subject of books and the inspiration for a 2005 Hollywood blockbuster, Lord of War. Yesterday, standing in court in shackles and an orange prison jumpsuit, the 41-year-old Russian shrugged off his larger-than-life reputation as an American-inspired myth, and described himself as a businessman in the aviation and construction trades.

Bout has been held in Bangkok since March, when he was seized in his room at a luxury hotel in a US-led sting operation, in which federal agents said they posed as members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) seeking to buy sophisticated weapons. The US is seeking his extradition on the grounds that he has supplied arms to terrorist groups.

Bout, fluent in at least five languages, spoke in Russian to deny the charges and say he had come to Bangkok "to relax" and hold talks with "a Thai businessman who wanted to buy aeroplanes". "I never met or talked to anyone from Farc. I didn't do anything wrong in Thailand. I have never been to Colombia or the United States."

He explained his predicament by suggesting: "The US is trying to use this to cover up its internal problems and prevent good relations between Thailand and Russia."

Bout has also been accused by the UN of breaking arms embargos to supply factions in conflicts in Liberia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Angola and Sierra Leone. An Interpol red notice has been issued for his arrest on Belgian charges of weapons trafficking and money-laundering.

It is unclear why Bout left the safety of Moscow, where he lived with his wife and daughter and appeared to enjoy the protection of the Russian government. He was presumably aware of the risk involved in travelling to Thailand, having backed out of other meetings out of fear of a trap.

Bout has travelled under at least five aliases and passports, which recorded his year of birth as 1967 in Dushanbe, Tajikistan. But he claimed in a 2002 radio interview in Moscow that he was born in Turkmenistan.

He attended the Soviet Military Institute for Foreign Languages in Moscow before entering the armed forces. The institute has a long history of supplying recruits for military intelligence, the GRU, but Bout has claimed he was an air force officer with no intelligence ties. According to UN reports he served as a translator for peacekeepers in Angola in the 1980s, and there are unconfirmed reports he was stationed in Rome for Soviet intelligence.

Whatever his background, he appears to have seized on the business opportunity offered by the plentiful supply of military hardware left by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the lively demand for cheap weapons from former Soviet clients and a proliferation of armed groups fighting for power and resources in Africa and Latin America after the cold war.

He is also accused of supplying weapons to all sides in the Afghan conflict: the Northern Alliance, the Taliban and the US. The hearings could embarrass the Pentagon, which continues to do business with him in Afghanistan and Iraq, despite an executive order from the White House that it is illegal to do so.