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Dutch companies delivered large amount of
chemicals to Iraq
9.5.2007
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May 9, 2007
AMSTERDAM/GRONINGEN -- A report, released
today by "Campagne tegen Wapenhandel" (the Dutch
Campaign against Arms Trade) casts new light on the
role of the Netherlands in the 1980s with regards to
Iraq's chemical weapons programme.
Studies show that the government deliberately did
very little to prevent Dutch companies from
supplying Iraq with precursors for the production of
chemical weapons.
The case of Frans van Anraat, in which the appeals
court will pronounce its sentence today, therefore
fits into a broader picture.
Especially the then KBS Holland and Melchemie
delivered large amounts of chemicals to Iraq in the
nineteen eighties. Both before and after the
laboriously established export restrictions, Dutch
companies were able to deliver precursor chemicals
to Iraq. The companies felt morally supported by the
Ministry of Economic Affairs, for whom the economic
interests prevailed.
Foreign Trade minister Bolkestein, in particular,
has a disconcerting role in this matter.
Shortly after the start of the war between Iraq and
Iran, already the first reports on Iraq's use of
poison gas came in and the government in The Hague
was aware of this. Yet the Dutch government made no
attempts to prevent Dutch companies from getting
involved in Iraq's chemical weapons programme.
Only when the United States, in 1984, confronted the
Netherlands with the large Dutch orders coming from
Iraq, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs started
acting. At the intercession of the late Dr. Ooms, a
list of initially 21 chemicals, on which export
authorization was to be applied, was then composed.
Under great pressure of Bolkestein, this list was
reduced to only seven chemicals. |
The chemicals were also used against Iraq's own
Kurdish population, including an attack on the town
of Halabja in 1988 which killed over 5,000 Kurds.
Frans van Anraat, a Dutch businessman who sold
chemicals to Saddam used in gas attacks on
Kurdish villages in Iraq in the 1980s |
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"Campagne tegen Wapenhandel" thinks that the
juridical case against Van Anraat should result in a
large-scale independent investigation in the
government's and business community's involvement in
the export of chemicals to Iraq in the nineteen
eighties.
To download a summary of the report The
Netherlands and the chemical weapons of Iraq
click here.
electroniciraq.net
About Frans van Anraat
Frans Cornelis Adrianus van Anraat (born August 9,
1942 in Den Helder) is a Dutch businessman who sold
raw materials for the production of chemical weapons
to Iraq during the reign of Saddam Hussein.
During the 1970's Van Anraat worked at engineering
companies in Italy, Switzerland and Singapore that
were building chemical plants in Iraq. Having
learned about the trade in chemicals, he founded his
own company, "FCA Contractor", based in Bissone,
Switzerland. From 1984 he supplied thousands of tons
of chemicals to Iraq.
Among these chemicals were the essential raw
materials for producing mustard gas and nerve gas.
Both gases were used during the Iran-Iraq war
between 1980-1988 as well as during an attack the
military carried out on Iraqi Kurds in 1988, in
which some 5,000 people were killed. This attack was
part of the Al-Anfal campaign of the Iraqi regime
against Kurds in the north of the country.
After his arrest and release in Italy in 1989, Van
Anraat fled to Iraq, where he lived for the next 14
years. When Saddam's regime fell in 2003, Van Anraat
returned to the Netherlands. He was arrested on
December 6, 2004 for complicity to war crimes and
genocide. On December 23, he was sentenced to
fifteen years in prison for complicity to war
crimes, but the court argued the charges of
complicity to genocide could not be substantiated.
The public prosecutor appealed the verdict. This
case is also notable, because it established that
the chemical bombings in North Iraq constituted
genocide according to the Convention on the
Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
Soon after his arrest, Dutch newspapers reported
that Van Anraat had been an informer of the Dutch
secret service AIVD.
Van Anraat is the only Dutchman ever to appear on
the FBI's most wanted list.
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