U.S. Charges 10 in Bid to Sell Arms to Iraqis : Weapons: Two O.C. men are indicted, along with six former high-ranking Polish officials and two others.

A federal grand jury has indicted six former high-ranking Polish officials, two Orange County men and two others for allegedly trying to sell millions of dollars’ worth of MIG fighter planes, assault rifles, grenade launchers and missile systems to Iraq, federal officials said Thursday.

In a six-count indictment unsealed in Brooklyn, N.Y., the 10 suspects are charged with conspiracy, dealing in firearms without a license and illegally transferring AK-47 automatic assault rifles, said Andrew J. Maloney, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York.

The six former Polish officials, along with an American citizen living in Poland, were arrested in Frankfurt, Germany, on March 10. The United States is seeking their extradition, officials said.

The two Californians--Ronald James Hendron, 51, of El Toro, the plot’s alleged mastermind, and Jehmin Lah, 44, of Newport Beach, its alleged financier--were arrested the next day in New York as they returned from Europe. They have since been released on bail. New York authorities also arrested a German citizen in connection with the plot.

In an interview last month, Hendron strongly denied any wrongdoing. Lah did not return repeated calls from the media.

“The proliferation of military weapons from the armories of former Eastern European Bloc countries is a matter of great concern,” said Maloney, in announcing the indictment. “While the charges announced today do not eliminate the problem, (they) have struck at the heart of a significant source.” According to the indictment, Hendron and an employee of his El Toro-based munitions trading company, International Business Centers, acted with four of the former Polish officials as a broker to sell 105,000 assault rifles, 9,000 RPG-7 grenade launchers, 1,000 Strella antiaircraft missile systems and an unspecified number of MIG fighters to U.S. Customs undercover agents posing as representatives of Iraq.

The weapons, according to the indictment, were to come from arms suppliers in Poland and Russia.

One count in the indictment says that in January of this year Hendron and his associates shipped 100 assault rifles--samples of the weapons they could provide--to New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport using a fraudulent bill of lading indicating that the weapons were ultimately destined for the Philippines.

In early March, in furtherance of the conspiracy, Hendron and his employee met with all six former Polish officials and the German national in Germany to negotiate the final terms of the arms deal, according to the indictment.

The weapons were to be shipped to the United States from Eastern Europe and then to the Philippines, where they were to be illegally forwarded to Iraq, the indictment alleges.

Those indicted include Jan Gorecki, a former Polish diplomat who once lived in Washington; Wojciech Baranski, former deputy chief of staff of the Polish army; Jerzy Napiorkowski, deputy minister of finance in the last Polish Communist government; Jerzy Brzostek, former deputy minister of the Polish Housing Authority; Zbigniew Grabowski, former director of the Polish technology office, and Rajmund Szwander, general manager of the state-operated Lucznik armament factory in Radom, Poland. Also arrested in Germany was Stan Kinman, a Hendron employee who lived in Poland.

Arrested in New York along with Hendron and Lah was Heiko Luikenga, a German national who was a shipping broker with a German trading company.