Bout is just the middleman; target the big fish

Bout, who is said to have inspired the Hollywood film "Lord of War" starring Nicholas Cage, has been fighting extradition since his March 2008 arrest in Bangkok on charges of peddling weapons.

While the decision may have surprised some, given the close diplomatic ties between Thailand and the US, not to mention the fact that Bout has been on the bad-boy list of just about every international agency, the court ruled that it "does not have the authority to punish actions done by foreigners against other foreigners in another country".

Bout was arrested in a sting operation at a Bangkok hotel after allegedly agreeing to supply surface-to-air missiles to US agents posing as guerrillas from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc).

He said that Farc had been designated a terrorist organisation by the United Nations and the United States but not by Thailand, meaning that as far as Thailand was concerned, it was a political movement.

"So the defendant's conspiracy counts as a political movement and therefore we have agreed to dismiss the case," presiding judge Jitakorn said.

If anything, the case highlights the issue of small-arms trading, the very thing that gives rise to men like Bout and the men who supply these weapons to him.

While we don't have to look far to see what kind of damage these small arms have inflicted in restive communities - Thailand's deep South and the northern Golden Triangle area are examples - what is often overlooked or kept off the radar screen is the behind-the-scenes dealing between suppliers, buyers and go-betweens.

It raises the question of accountability of these controlled items. In January 2004, in Narathiwat, scores of Malay Muslims raided an Army battalion and made off with more than 300 weapons. It took the Army months before it could say for sure how many weapons went missing.

It's one thing if the missing items were cabbages. But these were firearms - military equipment that is supposed to be under a high degree of control and accountability.

Men like Bout are not created out of a vacuum. In previous decades when Indochina was in flames, we turned a blind eye to the movements of small arms through Thailand.

During the killing fields of Cambodia, many of this country's top brass became rich, acting as brokers for these small arms. Now we have men like Bout.

Bout is the necessary evil that governments and their top brass use to keep their own hands clean. Perhaps the search for truth and justice should go beyond such unofficial middlemen to include other more powerful individuals who stand to gain from this type of transaction.