Voulez-vous acheter des armes avec moi, ce soir? (UPDATED)

Are we entirely sure that this isn't actually an episode of "Rocky and Bullwinkle"?

A Belgian arms dealer who allegedly tried to smuggle fighter-jet engines and parts from the United States to Iran has been indicted, U.S. officials announced Wednesday, days after he was arrested in New York City after stepping off a flight from France.

Jacques Monsieur, 56, was charged Aug. 27 by a federal grand jury with six counts of conspiracy, smuggling, money laundering, and violating weapons-trafficking laws and export controls related to a U.S. trade embargo on Iran.

But wait, it gets even better:

Authorities say Monsieur, nicknamed "The Field Marshal," according to U.S. officials, in February contacted a person he thought could supply him with engines for F-5 fighter or C-130 cargo transport aircraft. That person turned out to be an undercover ICE agent. Monsieur subsequently met with undercover agents in Paris and London, authorities say.

The dude's name is Jacques Monsieur? His real name? Was the ICE agent who arrested him named Joe America? I know the guy is Belgian and not French, but is there a more hilariously stereotypical frog-eater name? (Half of this blog is French, ok? So I get some slack on the ethno-national slurs.) And then he goes by "The Field Marshal"?

I'm going to go ahead and nominate Jacques Monsieur, AKA The Field Marshal as my Favorite Francophone Villain. I know he's trying to sell plane parts to the bad guys and all that, but this is just too funny.

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UPDATE: Here's a lot more info on The Field Marshal from some place called the Center for Public Integrity. (Slightly dated, as it seems to have been written around 2002.) Sounds like he's had his mitts in the Congo mess, so maybe Lil has something to add to this.

Really? You don't know who bought weapons in Liberia?? (minor updates)

Foreign Policy has a fascinating interview with Liberian Senator Prince Johnson, a former rebel leader and (early) Charles Taylor acolyte. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in Liberia recently recommended that he be tried--it also recommended that Liberia's President, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf be barred from running for office again for her initial support to Taylor's regime (but let's leave the latter aside for today).

What I find most surprising about Johnson's interview is this though:

Who supplied the guns to them? Who supplied the finance to buy the weapons? Who provided the training? It's a whole lot of questions that need answers...The first group of people that bear the greatest responsibility is not the fighting man but the people who supplied and bought the weapons. I don't know who planned and bought all the weapons, but the men didn't just come here shooting guns from the sky.

Umm--yeah right. I mean fair enough, the guns didn't just fall out of the sky (though given the flight safety record of some of the companies involved even that is possible). Still, I'm pretty sure A LOT of people know exactly where the guns came from. Why? Because since 2000, the UN has been monitoring the arms embargo--first on Sierra Leone and then on Liberia. And, well, if you watch a very nice Frontline documentary, Gunrunners, it will give you the basics of how the guns were purchased and financed. Global Witness has also done some really nice work on this. The International Crisis Group has also worked on this.

But to cut a long story short, it involves diamonds, timber, stocks of weapons in Eastern Europe, fake end-user certificates, unregistered aircraft, falsified flight plans, and transnational criminal networks. In some the UN reports, it even involves invoices, photos of Taylor associates with known weapons providers, photographs of the weapons on aircraft etc.

To add just one last thing: either Prince Johnson's staff hasn't briefed him, or perhaps he's just clueless (I won't make other assumptions since I know more about weapons trafficking than I do about the details of Liberian history) but really, where the weapons came from is open knowledge and to say that this needs investigation is simply not true and it's a distraction from more important issues. Thanks for the point about Khaddafi SNLII...

And the second thing, the important distraction is this: apparently Johnson is threatening to kill TRC members (which he denies) and is arguing that he has immunity from prosecution because of an amnesty law he says the legislature has passed.