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A Labour peer in the House of Lords has railed against the decision by US authorities to release an international arms dealer he dubbed the “Merchant of Death” over twenty years ago. Viktor Bout, 55, is considered by many to be one of the world’s most prolific arms dealers. He has reportedly been set free in exchange for the detained American basketball player Brittney Griner, who was arrested at Moscow Airport for possessing cannabis oil and sent to a penal colony earlier this year.

President Joe Biden informed the press that the WBNA star would be heading back to the US earlier today, saying, “she is safe, she is on a plane, she is on her way home.”

Peter Hain, a former Minister of State Foreign and Commonwealth Office, was the first to describe Bout as the “Merchant of Death” in the year 2000.

Speaking to Express.co.uk, Lord Hain described Viktor Bout as “a Putin lackey”, going on to say that he had “the blood of thousands of his hands from shamelessly supplying arms to conflict zones around the world.”

Mr Hain added: “I understand why these prisoner trades take place, but Bout should not have been allowed out.”

Peter Hain served as the Labour MP for Neath from 1991 and 2015 and worked for twelve years as a senior minister in Tony Blair and Gordon Brown’s Governments.

As well as working as a minister in the foreign office, he also held the roles of Leader of the House of Commons, Secretary of State for Wales, Opposition Whip, and Secretary of State for Work & Pensions, among others.

As well as sitting in the House of Lords, he is both a campaigner and author of books like “Outside In” and “Ad & Wal: values, duty, sacrifice in apartheid South Africa.”

Throughout the early 1990s, Viktor Bout is said to have harnessed the chaos that followed the USSR’s breakup to build a network that could transport arms and military equipment across the globe.

Using soviet-era aircraft and aircrew, he is alleged to have supplied weapons in conflict zones like Congo, Liberia, and Sierra Leone.

Bout was so notorious that his story is said to be part of the inspiration behind the 2005 film “Lord of War” starring Nicolas Cage and Jared Leto as arms-dealing brothers Yuri and Vitaly Orlov.

Viktor Bout was eventually arrested in Thailand in 2008.

He was recorded by two US confidential sources agreeing to supply millions of dollars worth of weapons to the FARC – a Colombian group designated a foreign terrorist organization by the USA.

Bout was told the package, which included aeroplanes outfitted with grenade launchers and 30,000 AK-47 firearms, was destined to kill American personnel in Colombia.

He told the sources: “We have the same enemy”, going on to say that he had been “fighting the United States…for 10 to 15 years.”

He was subsequently extradited to the US in 2010.

In November 2011, he was found guilty of four charges, including conspiring to kill US nationals and conspiring to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization.

Russia’s foreign ministry has allegedly confirmed the prisoner swap, with the BBC reporting them as saying: “The Russian citizen has been returned to his homeland” after an exchange at Abu Dhabi airport.”

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