MOBILE, Ala. -- An internationally known arms dealer has been charged in a Mobile, Ala.-based case with trying to supply U.S. jet fighter engines to Iran in violation of U.S. prohibitions. Jacques Monsieur is being held at the Baldwin County correctional center in Bay Minette, Ala.

A Belgian citizen with a documented history of arms sales to Third World dictators, Monsieur was arrested Friday when his plane landed in New York City. He made a court appearance this afternoon in Mobile, where U.S. Magistrate Judge Katherine "Kit" Nelson ordered him detained and scheduled his arraignment for next week.The charges stem from an eight-month investigation led by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents based in Mobile. The six-count indictment handed down last week by a grand jury accuses Monsieur and co-defendant Dara Fotouhi -- an Iranian currently living in France -- with conspiracy, money laundering, smuggling and violations of the Arms Export Control Act and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.

• Read the entire six-count indictment.

Federal investigators describe the defendants as experienced arms dealers who have been actively working with the Iranian government to obtain military items. In February, the indictment alleges, Monsieur began having regular e-mail contact with an undercover agent seeking engines for the F-5 fighter jet or the C-130 military transport plane. "The facts alleged in this indictment underscore the global reach of Iranian procurement networks and the international arms traffickers who help supply them" Deputy Attorney General David Ogden said from Washington. "This case also highlights the importance of keeping restricted U.S. weapons technology out of their grasp."

Under the terms of the U.S. trade embargo with Iran, such items may not be exported there without express permission from the U.S. government.

Authorities say Monsieur allegedly planned to hide the engines' true destination by claiming they were being sent to Colombia instead of Iran.

In July, according to court papers, Monsieur contacted an undercover agent offering $110,000 for jet parts and a $300,000 down payment for two of the fighter jet engines.

In a 2002 report, the Center for Public Integrity alleged that Monsieur once tried to sell uranium to Iran and to blackmail the French government:

That middleman, Jacques Monsieur, was not the sort of man to write off his losses. Believed to be among the biggest arms traffickers in Europe, Monsieur had violated a United Nations embargo by shipping arms to Bosnia and Croatia during the long bloody conflict in those countries, with the approval, he later claimed, of both the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and the Direction de Surveillance de Territoire (DST), the French domestic intelligence service. He later forfeited his good relations with Washington by acting as an importer-exporter of arms for the Islamic Republic of Iran, for whom he also tried to procure uranium. He worked closely with executives from the French oil giant, Elf Aquitaine, the state-owned petroleum company that, until its merger with TotalFina in 2000 to form TotalFinaElf, was the sixth largest oil producer in the world. Though he had aroused the ire of U.S. government officials and was under investigation by French and Belgian law enforcement authorities, Monsieur lived openly in France, all the while violating international sanctions by shipping arms to war-torn countries.

(For a complete report, read Thursday's Press-Register.)