and was sentenced to nine years in a Russian penal colony.
Bout has spent the past 12 years in an American jail, after being found guilty of conspiring to support terrorists and kill Americans. He was a prominent international arms dealer during the 1990s and is believed to have done business in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Angola, Liberia, Rwanda, and Afghanistan.Bout's new membership of the LDPR means that he could seek a seat in parliament, although the arms dealer told Russian media that he had no immediate plans to participate in"any elections," The Guardian reported.
"Viktor Bout is not a person, he is an example of firmness," Prigozhin said in a statement posted by his catering company, Concord, according to The Guardian.The Pentagon, however, has expressed concerns that the convicted arms dealer could return to his old line of business. "I think there is a concern that he would return to doing the same kind of work that he's done in the past," a senior defense official told journalists last week,