From African civil wars to Colombian guerrilla conflicts, the 42-year-old former Soviet air force pilot allegedly used his command of six languages to barter deals for planes and guns across the world.

Burly and with a signature moustache, his notoriety inspired the Hollywood film "Lord of War" starring Nicolas Cage, in which the anti-hero escaped justice.

Bout finally seemed to have met his match when he was arrested at a Bangkok hotel in March 2008 while negotiating with US agents posing as guerrillas from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

But after an 18-month legal battle in Thailand's courts, Bout has won a victory against US attempts to extradite him and charge him with terrorism offences that carry a life sentence.

The judges surprised Thailand's close American allies when they ruled that Bout could not be deported to the United States to stand trial because the FARC was not listed in the kingdom as a terrorist group.

He will walk free later this week if Thailand's government fails to appeal against the decision.

Bout himself maintained his innocence from the day he was picked up at the five-star Sofitel hotel in the Thai capital after allegedly negotiating to supply surface-to-air missiles in a series of covert meetings that also took him to Denmark and Romania.

"I never supplied arms and especially never had any deal with Al-Qaeda," Bout told Channel 4 News, insisting instead that he had always run a legitimate air cargo business.

Bout was born in the Tajikistan capital Dushanbe in 1967 and studied several languages -- including English, French and Portuguese -- at Moscow's military institute for foreign languages before joining the Soviet air force.

He has repeatedly denied suggestions that he was a former KGB agent and that he bought weaponry, aircraft and helicopters at throwaway rates at the fall of the Soviet Union to supply to conflict zones.

However, former British foreign office minister Peter Hain dubbed him the "Merchant of Death," while Amnesty International has alleged that at one time he operated a fleet of more than 50 planes ferrying weapons around Africa.

The British press has linked him to Al-Qaeda and to Afghanistan's extremist Taliban movement. Bout is also suspected of smuggling arms to former Liberian president Charles Taylor, who was subject to an UN arms embargo.

Journalist Douglas Farah, who co-authored a book on Bout, has called him "a unique creature" born of the end of Communism and the rise of unbridled capitalism when the Berlin Wall came down in the early 1990s.

Bout, also known as "Boris" and "Vadim Markovich Aminov" among several other pseudonyms, kept a high profile since his arrest, aided by an impassioned appearance by his wife at an extradition hearing earlier this year.

"He became a celebrity in a sense because of NGOs and UN reporting about him," Alex Vines, head of the Africa programme at Britain's Royal Institute of International Affairs, told AFP.

"He became the brand name for sanction-busting, but there are plenty of others who can offer the same services. It contributed to his problems, that he was a brand to be recognised," he said.

"This is a business that doesn't do well with this kind of recognition."

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