THE government has been flying supplies to Iraq using an airline linked to a Russian trafficker wanted for running arms to Al-Qaeda.

Jet Line International, which is used by the Department for International Development (DfID) for work in Iraq, has been named by the American government as being associated with Victor Bout, 37.

Bout has made millions of pounds from breaking United Nations sanctions and has been condemned by a British minister as a “merchant of death”.

He is the subject of an international arrest warrant for allegedly flying weapons to Al-Qaeda and the Taliban shortly before the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

A second firm linked to Bout has also received DfID money to fly aid to Africa.

The government stopped using the firms once it found out about the alleged links to Bout, but they have received thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money. One flight alone for DfID this year is understood to have cost £42,000.

Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrats foreign affairs spokesman, said: “The British taxpayer is entitled to expect that public money will not be directed towards companies whose previous behaviour has been so far outside civilised standards.”

Apart from the DfID contracts, Bout-linked airlines have also been used by the charity Oxfam and by Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR), the British-based firm expected to manage the £4 billion construction of two navy aircraft carriers.

Planes operated by companies associated with Bout are reported to have landed in Baghdad on at least 195 occasions on American military contracts.

The CIA in October 2003 warned that Bout air cargo companies were profiting from reconstruction in Iraq, although it is unclear whether the intelligence was shared with Britain.

Jet Line International, the company used by DfID in Iraq, is an air freight carrier with offices in Ukraine. Civil Aviation Authority records show that Jet Line airlifted armour-plated vehicles to Baghdad for DfID. The consignment left Manston airfield in Kent in March on an Ilyushin cargo jet carrying no airline markings.

The airline is understood to have been identified as a Bout company in a warning letter circulated to diplomatic posts by the US State Department in June this year. The nature of the alleged links is unclear and Jet Line this weekend denied being associated with Bout.

Three weeks before the Baghdad flight, on February 27 this year, DfID hired a second company, Aerocom, to fly tents to Morocco after an earthquake. Aerocom, based in the former Soviet republic of Moldova, also flew from Manston.

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