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Dutchman 'Frans Van Anraat' jailed for 17
years over Iraq poison gas
9.5.2007
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A
Dutch court sentenced the Dutch businessman 'Frans
Van Anraat' to 17 years for selling poision gas to
Saddam Hussein used against Iraqi Kurds and
including an attack on the town of Halabja in 1988
which killed over 5,000 Kurds.
May 9, 2007
AMSTERDAM, May 9, - A Dutch appeals court
raised the prison sentence of a Dutch businessman to
17 years after confirming on Wednesday he was guilty
of complicity in war crimes for selling chemicals to
Iraq used in deadly gas attacks.
Frans Van Anraat was sentenced in 2005 to 15 years
in prison for complicity in war crimes for supplying
raw materials that were used to make poison gas by
Saddam Hussein's Iraq in the 1980-1988 war with
Iran.
The poison gas was also used against Iraq's own
Kurdish population, including an attack on the town
of Halabja in 1988 which killed over 5,000 Kurds.
Van Anraat had appealed against the sentence but the
court turned down his appeal and increased the
sentence by two years.
"The court decided to increase the jail sentence
because Van Anraat committed these crimes several
times, not just once, out of pure greed," the
spokeswoman for the appeals court in The Hague said.
In the appeals trial, prosecutors tried to raise
charges of genocide against Van Anraat for the
second time.
Van Anraat was acquitted of genocide charges in
2005, and the court acquitted him again, because it
could not be proven he knew exactly how the
chemicals would be used, a spokeswoman said.
An Iraqi prosecutor last December showed the court
trying Saddam an internal memo from the president's
office which praised van Anraat for supplying Iraq
"with rare and banned chemical weapons."
In a magazine interview in 2003, van Anraat admitted
to supplying the chemicals but denied knowing they
were destined for Iraq and that they would be used
to make poison gas.
Prosecutors have said he shipped chemicals from the
United States to Belgium and from Belgium to Iraq
via Jordan. He also
shipped chemicals from Japan to Italy, and then
overland to Iraq.
Reuters |
Frans van Anraat, a Dutch businessman who sold
chemicals to Saddam used in gas attacks on
Kurdish villages in Iraq in the 1980s
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.
Former dictator Saddam Hussein
Photo : AFP |
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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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