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ROTTERDAM, Netherlands (Reuters) - A
Dutch businessman accused of selling Saddam Hussein
ingredients for chemical weapons used against Iraqi
Kurds appeared in court on Friday to face charges of
complicity in war crimes and genocide.
Prosecutors say Frans van Anraat, 62, supplied
thousands of tonnes of agents for poison gas the
former Iraqi government used in the 1980-1988 war
with Iran and against its own Kurdish civilians,
including an attack on the town of Halabja in 1988.
U.N. weapons inspection agencies have described Van
Anraat as one of the most important middlemen in
Iraq's acquisition of chemical weapons raw
materials.
"It was known since the mid-1980s that the Iraqi
government was using poison gas in the war against
Iran and against its own population," prosecutor
Fred Teeven said as he outlined charges at a
pre-trial hearing in Rotterdam.
Saddam and his feared cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid,
also known as "Chemical Ali", face trial for war
crimes, including the Halabja attack, at a special
tribunal in Iraq.
Van Anraat, the first Dutchman to be tried on
genocide- and war crimes-related charges, faces up
to life in prison if convicted. The trial proper is
likely to begin later this year.
Iranian and Iraqi victims of chemical attacks plan
to seek up to 10,000 euros ($13,430) compensation
each from the accused, a lawyer for the group said
before the hearing.
About a dozen Kurds gathered outside the
high-security court with a banner commemorating the
Halabja attack which killed an estimated 5,000
people 17 years ago this week.
"It was a black page in Kurdish history," said
Sherzad Rozbayani, a member of a Kurdish students
union.
SHOCKED BY HALABJA
Iraqi forces attacked Halabja after it was captured
by Iranian troops in what Baghdad said was an act of
betrayal by local Kurds. The attack gained
international notoriety after Iran invited foreign
journalists to see the devastated town, still strewn
with bodies.
Van Anraat was first detained in Milan in 1989
following a U.S. request but was released after two
months. He then fled to Iraq, where it is thought he
stayed until the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, when he
returned to the Netherlands through Syria.
He was arrested by Dutch officials at his Amsterdam
home in December as he was preparing to leave the
country.
"The images of the gas attack on the Kurdish city
Halabja were a shock. But I did not give the order
to do that. How many products, such as bullets do we
make in the Netherlands?" Van Anraat said in a 2003
interview with Dutch magazine Revu.
The United States said Iraq's suspected weapons of
mass destruction were one of its main reasons for
going to war in 2003, but it has yet to discover
significant stockpiles.
A criminal investigation by U.S. customs authorities
based in Baltimore a few years ago found that Van
Anraat had been involved in four shipments to Iraq
of thiodiglycol, an industrial chemical used in
making mustard gas.
Van Anraat is suspected of having had direct contact
with Iraqi authorities and using front companies,
working through a Panamanian company based in Lugano,
Switzerland, according to the international probe
which led to his arrest.
The Netherlands beefed up its capacity to chase war
crimes suspects last year. Last week, a court
launched hearings into war crimes charges against
two Afghan men suspected of working for the Khad
secret police during communist rule in the 1980s.
The Netherlands, home to several international
courts, secured its first war crimes conviction in a
domestic court last year, when a former colonel in
the Rwandan army was sentenced to two and a half
years in jail for torture.
Reuters
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