“Concerning interests of the Russian citizen, all these months we have been giving him assistance, were in touch with his lawyers and his family, and I assure you that we will do all that is necessary to achieve his return home,” Lavrov added.

The Russian Foreign Ministry has expressed its surprise to the Thai Ambassador in Moscow Chalermpol Thanchitt over the ruling.

“We have pronounced utmost disappointment and bewilderment over the politically motivated verdict of the Thai appeals court, which contradicts the earlier decision of the criminal court of the country made in August, 2009, which refused extradition of Victor Bout to the US due to insufficient evidence by the American side of the Russian citizen’s guilt,” said the statement on the ministry’s website.

The statement added that the ambassador promised to report Russia’s position to the Thai government.

Washington wants Bout on charges of terrorism and supplying arms to Colombian rebels – allegations he denies.

A Thai court threw out Bout’s charges a year ago, ruling that they lacked legal grounds and were politically motivated.

Regardless, Bout has sat in prison ever since, while the US continued to appeal against the Thai court’s decision, submitting more allegations as evidence while he remained incarcerated.

Viktor Bout, nicknamed “The Merchant of Death”, denied all accusations of arms selling – and laughed off parallels with Hollywood’s Lord of War movie.

“I feel very sorry for Nicolas Cage who went to play this movie. It’s very silly. This movie is bad and I feel pity for him,” Viktor Bout said while being a guest of RT’s Spotlight programme.

His statement never changed – even when it came from behind bars in the infamous “Bankgok Hilton” prison.

“He was apprehended in the final stages of arranging a sale of millions of dollars of high-powered weapons to the people he believed to represent a known terrorist organization – the FARC,” announced Michael J. Garcia, US attorney, Southern District, NY.

Not many people were willing to give Bout the type of "credit" given to him by American prosecutors.

Former UN arms inspector Brian Johnson-Thomas believes Washington's battle to jail Bout has become personal.

“He is possibly a merchant of some deaths, but he certainly is not the man the US call ‘The Merchant of Death’,” Johnson-Thomas acknowledged. “I would think that 95% of his flights were ordinary commercial goods.”

In the long and drawn-out extradition hearing that took over two years, the United States changed, added and modified their charges against Mr. Bout to include violating international law as well as arms trafficking. His family believes at some point it became a process for the process instead of a process for justice.

Bout’s brother Sergey told RT that “Friday’s court ruling shows that the Thai justice system is entirely under US pressure. There is no justice as such. Work done for previous hearings over a year and a half clearly showed there is not enough evidence of my brother’s guilt. But for some reason it turns out to be enough for the appeals court. The US kept pressing the Thai court, the prosecutor general and then a senator signed a letter to Thai ambassador warning of the consequences if my brother is released. This again shows that Viktor Bout’s case is political and not criminal.”

Kent Goodman, media director of Trine Day books, believes Bout is being extradited to the US because he posed a direct threat to American businesses in Africa.

Bout's trial and tribulations have been as closely followed by the media as Hollywood’s version of the life of the Merchant of Death.

Bout has worked for the US, United Nations and European governments, claimed Madsen. 

“Mr. Bout knows entirely too much. He knows enough to embarrass the United States. The mere fact that he was on both sides of the Afghan conflict before 9/11 means he may know something about 9/11 that the rest of us may not know about,” said Madsen

Madsen argued that allowing Bout to live free is a risk the US does not want to take. If he were to talk or one day publishes what he knows it might embarrass the US and others.

“Bout knows enough going back to the Clinton administration, Bush 43, to basically put a pox on both their houses and of course I think the Obama administration is covering up for both those administrations,” said Madsen.

RT’s military analyst Evgeny Khrushchev explained why Bout is so important for America.

“Viktor Bout is a walking intelligence treasure – he has a phenomenal photographic memory, and there are several reasons why the US intelligence community is so keen to getting him to the US,” said Khrushchev. “First, they tried to recruit him. The CIA made several approaches to recruit; he refused.”

“[The first reason the CIA attempted to recruit Bout is because] he knows all the logistics of legal and illegal arm supplies around the world,” the analyst maintained. “[Secondly], he knows too much from the US viewpoint about the personal and financial shenanigans of the Clinton pair, especially about the fundraising campaign during the US presidential elections.”

“And third – he knows a lot about CIA front companies that are involved in smuggling… and he knows a lot about the financial schemes,” Evgeny Khrushchev concluded.