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Feds arrest Canadian owner of NM weapons training school

Agents plan to search school

ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico (CNN) -- Federal agents plan to serve a search warrant Monday at an explosives training school in the desert near Roswell where, authorities say, a Canadian national trained Arab students to use shoulder-launched missiles and other explosives.

David Hudak, 41, was arrested last week on federal explosives and immigration charges, said Special Agent Tom Mangan of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. A criminal complaint was filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Albuquerque.

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Hudak, from Canada, ran the school in the southeastern New Mexico desert where students from the United Arab Emirates and Yemen were taught how to use high-powered explosives.

Last week, agents seized about 1,000 pounds of munitions -- including warheads, rockets and missiles for shoulder-guided weapons -- and expect to seize about 4,000 pounds more from two bunkers Monday, Mangan said.

"Some warheads ... are basically from shoulder-launched weapons, which are bunker-defeat munitions," he said, adding agents will not know for sure what is inside until they open the bunkers.

There is no reason to suspect Hudak has ties to terrorist groups such as al Qaeda, he said.

Federal agents will be at the school, HEAT, which stands for High Energy Access Tools, over the next week, he said.

One reason Hudak was arrested was that he lied in order to obtain the explosives, using the school as a front, Mangan said.

"HEAT was the company name that he used, but also there's some licensing issues where that was also in Wyoming," he said.

The Web site for the school gives a Casper, Wyoming address, describing itself as "a provider of training services for law, military, and government personal (sic) only."

"It looks like that was, if you will, a front for him to hide himself and submerge himself to avoid the licensing," said Mangan.

Norm Cairns, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Albuquerque, said the school was engaged in "private training exercises," which by itself is not unusual.

"There are a lot of private firms in the United States that train members of the military from other parts of the world," Cairns said. "I don't know that that has any relevance at all to what the investigations focused on in southern New Mexico."

Mangan did not know how many students attended the class, which took place over the course of a couple of weeks.

Hudak is now in federal custody in Albuquerque for violations of laws governing explosives, firearms, and munitions, as well as immigration violations. Mangan said additional charges were pending.