Mexico City ? Mexico is investigating what a Pakistani national wanted by the United States for allegedly selling anti-aircraft missiles was doing in a beach community outside Tijuana, President Vicente Fox’s spokesman said Thursday.

Acting on intelligence provided by the United States, Mexican authorities captured Arif Durrani earlier this week as he left a restaurant in Playas de Rosarito, near the Tijuana-San Diego border, spokesman Ruben Aguilar said.

Durrani, 55, had entered Mexico from the United States but at the time of his arrest could not provide documents proving he had done so legally, Aguilar said.

Durrani was deported by Mexico late Wednesday, but he was taken into U.S. custody when his flight to Pakistan stopped in Los Angeles.

Aguilar said Mexico has not charged Durrani with wrongdoing, but its authorities were still investigating.

Aguilar noted that Mexico does not produce such missiles.

Durrani, a former U.S. resident, was convicted in the United States in 1987 of selling missile parts to Iran and served five years in prison. He was deported from the United States in 1998 and apparently has lived in Mexico since then.

It was unclear whether the current investigation was related to Durrani’s prior conviction. He had claimed to have acted as part of the 1980s Iran-Contra scandal, in which arms were sold to Iran to finance Nicaraguan rebels when the U.S. Congress had barred such aid.