A plane loaded with North Korean weapons that was seized in Thailand has been linked to the suspected Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, once dubbed the ''Merchant of Death'' for allegedly supplying the world's dictators and warlords.Thai authorities focused yesterday on inspecting the 35 tonnes of weapons seized from the cargo plane, as details of the alleged shady past of the Ilyushin Il-76 emerged. Its ultimate destination remained a mystery.
According to the crew's Thai lawyer, the plane was registered to Air West, a cargo transport company in Georgia.
Hugh Griffiths, a researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, said the plane had also been registered under a company named Beibars, linked to the Serbian arms trafficker Tomislav Damnjanovic, and with three companies identified by the US Treasury as companies controlled by Mr Bout.
Mr Griffiths is monitoring air cargo companies involved in arms trafficking. ''They are like flocks of migrating birds, these aircraft. They change from one company to another because the previous company has either been closed down for safety reasons or been identified in a UN trafficking report,'' he said.
The arms dealers had changed the plane's country of registration to Georgia because the EU had banned all cargo carriers registered in Kazakhstan, where Beibars is registered.
Mr Griffiths said the past owners of the aircraft had been documented by the UN as trafficking arms to Liberia, Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, Sudan and Chad. He said the plane had also been used to ship arms from the Balkans to Burundi in October.
The five-man crew - four from Kazakhstan and one from Belarus - were denied bail on Monday. They are being held at Klong Prem Central Prison in Bangkok, where Bout is detained. He was arrested in March 2008 and is fighting extradition to the US.