San Diego

A Louisiana couple indicted on charges of conspiring to illegally export oil field equipment to Libya entered pleas of innocent Friday before a U.S. magistrate in San Diego.

Cheryl and George Smith of Gretna, La., were arrested in January along with a Scottish businessman after a six-month undercover investigation by federal agents revealed that the three allegedly violated a U.S. trade embargo by arranging an equipment shipment to Libya.

During the investigation, a U.S. Customs agent posing as an equipment salesman for San Diego-based Solar Turbines Inc. sold the Smiths oil machinery worth $250,000, government officials charge. The couple, operators of Oil Patch Production Services Inc., then sold the equipment to Scottish businessman Francis George Christie, knowing it was intended for use in Libya’s nationalized, American-built oil fields, prosecutors charge.

Christie was lured to this country by the undercover agent on the promise of further shipments. He is being held without bail in San Diego.

At Friday’s arraignment, U.S. Magistrate Irma E. Gonzalez set bail for the Smiths at $100,000 each. Two partners of Christie’s also were named in an indictment issued by a federal grand jury last month, but they live in Scotland and cannot be extradited for the alleged offenses, which are not illegal there.

The five defendants are charged with conspiring to violate the embargo on trade with Libya imposed by President Reagan last February after attacks by Libyan-backed terrorists on the Rome and Vienna airports.