Ms. Scheindlin, who is now retired and works as a mediator and arbitrator, said in an interview earlier this year that she had long considered 25 years imprisonment to be excessive for a sting operation, and had regretted that it was the mandatory minimum she had to impose.
He was convicted of: Conspiracy to kill United States nationals, Conspiracy to kill officers and employees of the United States, conspiracy to acquire and use anti-aircraft missiles, and harboring/concealing terrorists. The charges carried a mandatory minimum sentence of 25 years. The government had asked for life.
I covered Viktor Bout's criminal case, the sting and the backstory pretty aggressively back in 2011 and 2012, relying on the documents filed in the court cases, here and in Thailand. Some of the posts are extremely detailed. Like this one I wrote on the day of sentencing, and this one on the day the jury began deliberations.
As to reporting on the swap from Russia, here is an interview with Viktor's wife Alla on Viktor's condition and his appreciation for the way he was treated on the trip from the U.S. to Abu Dhabi.
The swap saved Viktor less than 5 years, as that's all he had left to do on his sentence. I don't know how much time it saved Brittany. Bout spent all of his U.S. sentence as USP Marion in Illinois, the closest thing to a Supermax outside of Florence. I suspect the conditions weren't any better at the penal colony Brittany was sent to.
The USP in Marion, Ill, was for decades the country's first Supermax Prison housing "the worst of the worst". In 2006, it was re-designated medium security after its most violent offenders were sent to Admax at Florence, CO, but it still has one of the country's two Communications Management Units, and that's of course where Bout was placed.
Guards and cameras watch the CMU inmates' every move. Every word they speak is picked up by a counterterrorism team that eavesdrops from West Virginia. Prison officials budgeted more than $14 million for the snooping operation last year, according to appropriations documents and congressional testimony.
Here is a post with an interview of him talking about conditions at Marion. And another from 2015 when he lost 90 days of good time for making Kombucha in his cell.
I'm of course glad for Griner that she is coming home. Both were political pawns whose convictions and sentences were a travesty.
Kudos to attorney Steve Zissou who represents Viktor Bout and worked for his release. He says:
“No money was ever exchanged. No weapons were ever exchanged. He was retired, living in Moscow, and targeted specifically with a made-up crime simply so that he could be charged in the U.S. The U.S. is the only country that prosecutes cases like that. And they asked that Viktor be sentenced to life without parole. Life without parole! For a talk crime!”
Viktor Bout was another case of manufactured jurisdiction and a sting operation on foreign soil orchestrated by the global holy warriors known as the DEA.
