London: London-based NRI businessman Hemant Lakhani, who is in US custody for allegedly plotting to smuggle surface-to-air missiles, claims that he was trapped by FBI and Russian agents.

Lakhani, who is due to go on trial in a New Jersey court this year and could face 15 years in jail if convicted, said in an interview to 'The Times' that he was ensnared in a plot involving a sting operation, a professional informant, secret videotapes and a fake missile.

When 69-year-old Lakhani was arrested last year amid much publicity, he was branded by American prosecutors as a terrorist sympathiser involved in attempting to smuggle surface-to-air missiles into the US to shoot down airliners.

Lakhani was described by prosecutors as a "true believer in the cause that America should be attacked and that its citizens should be killed."

However, the businessman claims that there was no missile, no buyer and no seller. Lakhani, who had travelled the world in search of deals, says he was trapped after he was asked to use his global business links to find backers for a billion dollar Indian oil refinery project from which he stood to make $ 2.5 million.

He was introduced to a potential investor claiming to be a rich Saudi. In fact, he was a career informant called Air Haji, also known as Mohammed Habib Rehman, who has worked for the FBI and US drug investigators.

Shortly after September 11, 2001, Haji told Lakhani that he represented the Ogaden Liberation Front, a rebel group seeking independence in a region between Somalia and Ethiopia.