Putin's 'Merchant of Death,' who was exchanged for Brittney Griner, reportedly selling weapons to Iran-backed Houthis

Viktor Bout — the infamous Russian arms dealer released in an eyebrow-raising prisoner exchange for Brittney Griner — is now selling arms to the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen, according to a new report.

In December 2022, the Biden administration made a deal with Russia to exchange Bout for Griner.

Powerful weapons such as Kornet anti-tank missiles and anti-aircraft weapons could also be part of the alleged arms deal.

Griner is a basketball player in the WNBA.

In February 2022, Griner was detained at Sheremetyevo International Airport outside Moscow, Russia. Griner was accused of possessing cannabis, which is illegal in Russia. She admitted to the crime but claimed it was an "honest mistake." In August 2022, Griner was convicted and sentenced to nine years in prison.

Before her arrest in Russia, Griner made headlines for proclaiming that the national anthem shouldn't be played before sports games. She purposely stayed in the locker room when "The Star-Spangled Banner" was played before Phoenix Mercury games in 2020.

As Blaze News previously reported, Griner sang a different tune after being released and said in 2023: "Hearing the national anthem, it definitely hit different."

Bout – who is known as the "Merchant of Death" – is one of the most notorious arms dealers in the world. Bout has been an international weapons trafficker since the 1990s and has been linked to arms being dealt to Afghanistan, Colombia, Libya, and multiple conflicts in Africa.

In 2008, a U.S. sting operation led to Bout being arrested in Thailand after he allegedly offered to supply anti-aircraft missiles to Colombian guerrillas to shoot down American aircraft. In 2011, the Merchant of Death was convicted of conspiring to kill U.S. nationals, conspiring to kill U.S. officers and employees, conspiring to acquire and use anti-aircraft missiles, and conspiring to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization. At the time of his release, Bout had served 12 years of his 25-year sentence.

In the 2005 movie “Lord of War,” Nicolas Cage's character is loosely based on Bout.

Since the time of the controversial prison swap, Bout joined the pro-Kremlin, far-right Liberal Democratic Party of Russia. In 2023, Bout won a seat in a local assembly.

On Monday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Bout is back in the arms-dealing business.

According to the report, Bout is working on a deal to send small arms to Houthi militants in Yemen.

Citing a European security official and other people familiar with the matter, the WSJ reported that Houthi emissaries went to Moscow in August to negotiate the sale of $10 million worth of automatic weapons, where "they encountered a familiar face: the mustachioed Bout."

The first two deliveries would reportedly comprise mostly of an upgraded version of the AK-47 assault rifle and could start as early as this month. The shipment would allegedly be transported to the western Yemeni port of Hodeidah under the cover of food supplies. However, more powerful weapons such as Kornet anti-tank missiles and anti-aircraft weapons could also be part of the alleged arms deal.

Bout called the claim an “unsubstantiated accusation.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said of the WSJ article, "We are inclined to categorize it as fake news or an information attack on our elected representatives."

Steve Zissou, a New York attorney who represented Bout in the U.S., compared the rumored weapons deal to America's shipments of weapons to enemies of Russia.

"Viktor Bout has not been in the transportation business for over twenty years," Zissou told the Wall Street Journal. "But if the Russian government authorized him to facilitate the transfer of arms to one of America’s adversaries, it would be no different than the U.S. government sending arms and weapons of mass destruction to one of Russia’s adversaries as it has sent to Ukraine."

The Houthi slogan is: “God Is Great, Death to America, Death to Israel, Curse on the Jews, Victory to Islam.”

President Donald Trump’s administration designated the Houthis as global terrorists and a foreign terrorist organization in one of his last acts as president in January 2021. However, President Joe Biden reversed the decision a month later. The Biden administration changed course in January when Biden's State Department classified the Houthis as a "specially designated global terrorist group."

The U.S. Department of Defense declared in June, "The continued reckless behavior by Iran-backed Houthis threatens regional stability and endangers the lives of mariners across the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden."

The Yemen-based Houthis struck two cargo ships that required the vessel's crew to have to be rescued in June.

Since the Israel-Hamas War began last October, Houthis have targeted more than 80 merchant vessels with missiles and drones.

On Friday, the U.S. military struck more than a dozen Houthi targets in Yemen, according to U.S. officials.

Houthi rebels launched two drones and fired more than a half dozen ballistic missiles and anti-ship cruise missiles at three American ships traveling through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, but all were intercepted by Navy destroyers, the Associated Press reported.

Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck analyzed a video clip from Bout's first interview as a free man in decades.

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