THE HAGUE, Nov 20
(AFP) - 4h18 - The trial of a Dutch businessman
accused of aiding genocide by supplying ingredients
for chemical weapons used by the Saddam Hussein
regime in a 1988 massacre of Kurds is to begin here
Monday.
Frans van Anraat, 63, who was arrested in December
last year, is charged in connection with the poison
gas attacks against the Kurdish town of Halabja in
northern Iraq.
Philipe Grant of the Swiss-based human rights
organisation Trial Watch said Van Anraat is the
first person to be tried for the slaughter.
The Halabja massacre also features among the
preliminary charges against Saddam. |
Former dictator Saddam Hussein
Photo : AFP
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According to the prosecution, Van Anraat supplied
chemicals used in the attack, in which more than
5,000 people were killed. He is also accused in
connection with chemical attacks on the northern
Iraqi villages of Goktapa and Birjinni, and is
charged with complicity in war crimes for supplying
chemicals used in gas attacks on seven villages in
Iran between 1986 and 1988.
"The accused delivered, without scruples, the
substances after 1984 (when an export ban of the
specific chemicals was put into place), in
quantities which rule out a normal use," Prosecutor
Fred Teeven told a procedural hearing earlier this
year.
According to the prosecutor the evidence will show
that even after the widely publicized gas attack on
Halabja in 1988, Van Anraat continued to supply
chemical weapons materials to Iraq.
The materials allegedly included thiodiglycol and
phosphor oxychloride, both described as ingredients
for mustard and nerve gasses.
Van Anraat has not denied selling chemical
components to Iraq, but always maintained that he
was not aware of the use to which they were put.
In a television interview in 2003 Van Anraat said he
did not know Iraq used chemical weapons when he sold
them the components.
"I knew later but by that time it was too late," he
said then.
According to Dutch authorities, the US customs
launched an investigation into his activities in the
late 1980s, and concluded he was involved in four
shipments of thiodiglycol from the United States to
Europe in violation of export legislation.
He was arrested in 1989 in Italy on a US request but
fled to Iraq, where he remained until US-led forces
invaded the country in 2003, and then returned to
the Netherlands, Dutch officials said.
For as yet unspecified reasons the United States in
2000 withdrew the request for his extradition, and
Dutch authorities had no grounds for arresting him
until charges of being an accomplice in genocide and
war crimes were brought against him.
The trial is expected to take three weeks. A large
number of witnesses will be called and victims of
the alleged crimes will have the right to address
the court.
AFP
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