NEW YORK -- An Armenian immigrant accused of plotting to sell military weapons to an FBI informant posing as an arms dealer went on trial Wednesday with a prosecutor saying he was greedy for a fast buck and his defense lawyer saying he merely wanted a green card.
Artur Solomonyan and five others were accused of agreeing to obtain deadly weapons from those who knew what happened to weapons in the former Soviet Union, Assistant U.S. Attorney David Massey said.
"The defendants saw these deadly weapons as a way to make a quick buck," Massey said.
An indictment accused Solomonyan and others of conspiring between December 2003 and March 2005 to import shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, anti-tank guided missiles and machine guns without a license.
When prosecutors first announced the case, they said the FBI agent was posing as a middleman for terrorists. But Massey made no mention of that Wednesday.
Massey said the jury in U.S. District Court in Manhattan would hear the defendants using code words to refer to weapons on some of the thousands of tape-recorded telephone calls captured by the government during its investigation.
He said the arms delivered in New York, Los Angeles and Miami before the men were arrested included eight assault weapons, a machine gun and three high-powered rifles.
Solomonyan lawyer Seth Ginsberg said his client knew nothing about importing weapons when a government informant dangled the possibility of getting a green card to stay in the United States if he could arrange some weapons sales.
He said Solomonyan had no intention of importing weapons but just wanted to string along the informant long enough to get a green card.
"If the world had more arms dealers like Artur Solomonyan, the world would be a much safer place," Ginsberg said.
He said his client produced an outdated price list for weapons as a way to keep the informant working on his green card.
"Artur Solomonyan is not an arms dealer," he said.
The trial was delayed once before when the government informant, Kelly Davis, was hospitalized with stomach and chest pains and put on suicide watch.
Massey said the case began when one of the defendants approached Davis to ask about the sale of machine guns.
The prosecutor said Davis reported the offer to law enforcement, which initiated an investigation as Davis began making recordings, generating hundreds of pages of reports.
Solomonyan was charged with arms trafficking conspiracy, firearms trafficking conspiracy, interstate firearms trafficking and illegal transfer and possession of a machine gun in March 2005. If convicted, some defendants could face up to life in prison.
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