A Singapore man accused of illegally exporting technology to Iran that was later found in unexploded improvised explosive devices has been extradited to the United States to face charges, the U.S. Justice Department said Monday.
Lim Yong Nam, who is also known as Steven Lim, had been detained in Indonesia for the last year and a half, according to the Associated Press.
Prosecutors said he has been brought to Washington’s federal court, where the 42-year-old was indicted in 2010 on charges including smuggling, illegal export and making false statements to the U.S. government.
Lim and several other defendants are charged with helping export to Iran in 2007 and 2008 thousands of radio frequency modules that were purchased from an unnamed Minnesota company, and with lying to the U.S. government by saying that Singapore was the end destination of the goods. In reality, prosecutors say, the modules were exported to Iran through Singapore.
Lim told U.S. officials he was unaware of restrictions on U.S. exports to Iran, even though he had actually contacted a co-defendant a half-dozen times to discuss the prohibitions, according to the indictment.
Prosecutors said at least 16 of the modules, which have a range of commercial applications, were later found by coalition forces in unexploded IEDs in Iraq. The indictment describes IEDs as the number one threat to American troops in Iraq and says they caused about 60 percent of American combat casualties in Iraq between 2001 and 2007.
“The illegal export of restricted U.S. technology is extremely harmful to our national security,” Michael Steinbach, the executive assistant director of the FBI’s national security branch, said in a statement. “In this case the technology had lethal applications and was used in improvised explosive devices in Iraq, which endangered U.S. and coalition forces.”
Lim, who was indicted in 2010, was scheduled to make his first court appearance Monday.