Who is the “Death Trader” that exchanged America with Russia for the basketball star?

Greener was in custody since February after Moscow airport officials found cannabis oil in her trunk, while she was returning to the US after playing in Russia.

The rumors had circulated in American media for months that senior state department officials had sought to secure Greener's release in exchange for the freedom of arms dealer.

So notorious are the exploits of the former Soviet Air Force officer that they inspired a Hollywood film and gave him an impressive nickname.

 But who is the man known as Death Trader?

Bout was extradited from Thailand to the US in 2010, following a tough operation by the American Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) two years ago.

Boutt claimed that he was just an entrepreneur with a legitimate international transport business, falsely accused of trying to arm South American rebels.

But a jury in New York didn't believe his story.

He was sentenced to 25 years in prison in April 2012, after being convicted of plotting to kill American and American officials, send antiaircraft missiles and help a terrorist organisation.

His three-week trial heard that Boutt was told that weapons would be used to kill American pilots working with Colombian officials. Prosecutors said he responded: “We have the same enemy. ”

Bout A Russian national born in Soviet-dominated Tajikistan began his air transport career in the early 1990s, following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

According to a 2007 book Mr. Merchant of Death, by security experts Douglas Farah and Stephen Brown Boutt built his business using military planes left in Soviet empire air fields in the early 1990s.

Victor Boutt arrived in the United States in 2010.

Bout was extradited from Thailand to the US after Russian diplomats' efforts to free him failed.

Bout é, who was 45 when he was convicted, is said to have begun to channel weapons through a series of frontal companies in war parts of Africa.

The UN named him an associate of former Liberian President Charles Taylor, who was sentenced in 2012 on charges of aid and promotion for war crimes during the civil war in Sierra Leone.

“ [Bout is a] businessman, businessman and transporter of arms and minerals [which] supported the regime of former President Taylor in [an] attempt to destabilise Sierra Leone and gain illegal access to diamonds,” is said in UN documents.

Media reports in the Middle East claimed he was a smuggler of arms for Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

He is also supposed to have armed both sides in Angola's civil war and that he has supplied weapons to commanders and war governments from the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo to Sudan and Libya.

In an interview with United Kingdom Channel 4 News in 2009, he flatly denied having anything to do with Al-Qaeda or the Taliban.

But he acknowledged that he had flown to Afghanistan in the mid-1990s, saying they were used by commanders fighting the Taliban.

Meanwhile, law enforcement agencies followed him throughout the 2000s. He left his home in Belgium in 2002, when authorities there issued an arrest warrant.

It is thought that Bout travelled under several nicknames, moving to places such as the United Arab Emirates and South Africa before resurfaced in Russia in 2003, reports the BBC.

In the same year, British Foreign Minister Peter Hain invented the nickname “DeathTigtar”

After reading a 2003 report on him, Hain said: “Bout is the principal death dealer, who is the main channel for aircraft and supply routes that receive weapons... from Eastern Europe, primarily Bulgaria, Moldova and Ukraine in Liberia and Angola. .

The US moved against Bout throughout 2000, freezing his assets in 2006, but there was no law under which he could be prosecuted in the US.

Instead, US agents spent their time until 2008, when they presented themselves as buyers to the Columbia Farc rebels and met Bout through one of his former associates.

Shortly after secret officers discussed shipments of weapons to Farc with Bout, Thai authorities arrested him and initiated long legal procedures to send him to the US.

Boutt said the US issue against him was politically motivated; his wife was quoted as saying his only connection with Colombia was “the lessons of tango”.

Russian authorities supported him through all his legal procedures, with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov pledging to fight to ensure his return to Russia and labelling the decision of the Thai court “unfair and political”.

2005 film Lord of War, based on the life of the arms dealer, has at last the anti-heroe that escapes justice.

But such an end saved Bout, who had remained in US prison since his sentence in 2012.