Viktor Bout, a 41-year-old Russian businessman dubbed the “Merchant of Death,” was arrested in Thailand yesterday. He is accused of conspiring to sell weapons to a Colombian rebel group. He is also suspected of providing weapons to the Al Qaeda and Taliban.

U.S. authorities demand his extradition but for now he will remain in Thailand, where investigators are trying to find out if he negotiated a weapons deal with terrorists. Bout was arrested at a Bangkok hotel, after a four-month operation by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, U.S. and Thai authorities declared, according to the Associated Press.

He is accused of conspiring to sell millions of dollars in weapons. He apparently used contacts and planes from his days in Soviet Air Force to buy rocket launchers and missiles and then started to deliver them to rebel groups around the world, such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, also known as FARC. The United States identifies FARC as a foreign terrorist group because it is believed that it finances its activities through cocaine trafficking.

Police Col. Petcharat Sengchai of the Crime Suppression in Bangkok led the arresting team. Three informants were used to reach Bout through Andrew Smulian, his business associate. The meeting between him and the informants took place over four months and there were discussed the purchase of weapons and dropping them into FARC territory.

Conversations were secretly recorded and it appears that Smulian suggested Bout could get helicopter gunships. U. S attorney Michael Garcia declared that the cost of transporting the weapons was set at $5 million, reports the New York Times.

Bout has been a notorious arms dealer since the 1990s. It is said that his celebrity helped screenwriters to define a character in the 2005 film “Lord of War,” which starred Nicolas Cage.