UAE dismantles plane of gunrunner Russia wants for Americans

UMM AL-QUWAIN, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The hulking, Soviet-era cargo plane has sat for decades under the blazing sun in a remote corner of the United Arab Emirates, its four jet engines silent after years in the employ of a Russian gunrunner known as the “Merchant of Death.”

But instead of a missile or gunfire finally taking out this Ilyushin Il-76 tied to arms smuggler Viktor Bout, the plane appears to be doomed, destined for scrap to make way for a force more powerful in this federation of seven sheikhdoms: Luxury real estate.

The emirate of Umm al-Quwain plans a $675 million development on a island just across a lagoon from the deactivated airport where Bout's plane sits.

His legacy, however, lives on even as workers disassemble the aircraft's wings — Bout is in the news again as Russia has suggested America trade him for U.S. citizens held by Moscow amid its war on Ukraine.

“I had not realized that the plane was there to this day," said Stephen Braun, the co-author of a book on the gunrunner called “Merchant of Death." "But the irony is that this, this junk or whatever it’s use now has, in essence, far outlived Viktor Bout’s enterprise.”

For imbibers coming from Dubai, some 40 kilometers (25 miles) southwest along the curving coast of the Persian Gulf, the iconic bulging nose of the Ilyushin Il-76 represented a landmark for the low-cost liquor store at the emirate's Barracuda Beach Resort. That's even with large green letters painted on the Ilyushin for the last 20-odd years as an aviatic billboard for another hotel.

The Ilyushin's tail number — and two others on jet engines' inlet covers — link back to Bout-operated airlines that once plied the skies between Africa, Europe and the Middle East. Soviet-era ammunition, Kalashnikov rifles, rockets and other...