Acelor appeared in a special court here denying he had committed a crime, saying he was just an intermediary between "the government of Peru and an arms dealer."

The French citizen, who was extradited here from Germany in December 2002, stands accused of arms trafficking in support of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, for which he could face 15 years in jail and a fine of up to 1.5 million dollars.

Acelor, formerly based in Miami, admitted he served as an intermediary to buy arms from a Lebanese arms dealer, Sarkis Soghanalian, afterwhich thousands of rifles were secretly delivered to Colombian guerrillas in 1999.

Prosecutors believe Acelor was acting for former Peruvian spy chief Vladimiro Montesinos, who was imprisoned in 2001, when he negotiated the deal to buy 10,000 Kalashnikov AK-47 rifles from Soghanalian.

Acelor said he was contacted in October 1998 in Miami by an old friend and a Peruvian, Jose Luis Aybar Cancho, they said Peru's government was interested in the arms deal and Cancho portrayed himself as a Peruvian army captain, he claimed.

The Frenchman said he put them in contact with Soghanalian, who had thousands of rifles stored in Amman, Jordan. Some 700,000 dollars were deposited in a US bank to fund the transaction.

Soghanalian is in a US jail, he has said Montesinos, an ex-adviser to former president Alberto Fujimori, offered up to 78 million dollars for arms.

Montesinos was jailed after being found guilty of corruption, he still faces charges of human rights abuses and money laundering.

WAR.WIRE