Long-sought arms dealer caught

Bout was taken into custody by Thai police at a luxury hotel in Bangkok, where, U.S. officials said, he was waiting to complete a weapons deal in which he expected to earn as much as $15 million for delivering surface-to-air missiles, attack helicopters and other weaponry.

U.S. authorities said they would move quickly to secure Bout's extradition. But his controversial role in supplying the American military effort in Iraq and possible Russian interest in returning him to Moscow could complicate efforts to put him on trial in New York, said former officials who had pursued him in recent years.

Bout was targeted in a high-stakes inquiry led by U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents who used informants to lure an associate of the Russian to a flurry of meetings on Caribbean islands and in Copenhagen and Bucharest, Romania, federal investigators said. The pursuit concluded Thursday morning when Bout was baited into appearing at the Sofitel Silom hotel in Bangkok.

Bout's enterprises have been linked to the arming of warlords and dictators in Africa, fanning the flames of civil wars throughout the 1990s.

Authorities allege that his companies helped arm the Taliban in Afghanistan before the Sept. 11 attacks, and sold them a dozen cargo planes. Then he managed to switch sides, they say, aiding U.S. military reconstruction efforts in Iraq by staffing hundreds of supply flights to Baghdad.

Despite an indictment by Belgian authorities and investigations by American officials and United Nations arms experts, Bout has repeatedly eluded manhunts while building a global arms and air transport empire that stretched from Moscow to the Dallas suburbs.

Michael J. Garcia, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said Thursday in unsealing a criminal complaint against Bout and an alleged accomplice that American officials would press for Bout's extradition. Bout faces charges of providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization.