Eric Eoin Marques accused of being world's most prolific "facilitator of child porn on the planet"

LONDON Eric Eoin Marques appeared in a Dublin court on Thursday morning and learned that he may soon be extradited to the U.S. to face charges that he enabled some of the biggest websites peddling child abuse on the internet to function.

Marques, a dual U.S.-Irish national, was arrested last week at his home in Dublin on behalf of American authorities, according to Irish and British media.

During an initial court appearance last week, an FBI agent reportedly called Marques the single "largest facilitator of child porn on the planet" for running a website hosting service which allegedly enabled some of the world's worst offending child abuse sites to operate with impunity for years.

Following a one-year joint investigation by the FBI and Irish police, Marques, 28, is reportedly facing four criminal charges in the U.S. related to his hosting service's complete lack of control over the content his clients uploaded.

According to the Ireland's Independent the content uploaded to servers controlled by Marques included graphic images of prepubescent children being raped and tortured.

According to the BBC, the lawyer for Ireland's attorney general asked the judge to keep Marques in custody to give the U.S. Justice Department time to file the formal extradition request.

A formal extradition request from the U.S. would have to be signed off on by Ireland's own justice minister, Alan Shatter.

The judge agreed to keep him in custody for another week, but according to the BBC's report he warned the attorney general's office that time was "running out."

"If at that juncture a formal request for extradition is not received and not certified by the minister, Mr Marques will be released."