Dutchman faces war crime charge for Saddam supply

Prosecutors today said they will charge a 62-year-old Dutchman as an accomplice to genocide and other war crimes for supplying Saddam Hussein’s regime with lethal chemicals that were used in the 1988 chemical attack on the Kurdish town of Halabja.

Wim de Bruin of the national prosecutor’s office said the man, who was arrested in Amsterdam yesterday, will face charges “for violating the laws of war and involvement in genocide”.

“The man is suspected of delivering thousands of tons of raw materials for chemical weapons to the former regime in Baghdad between 1984 and 1988,” prosecutors said in a statement.

An estimated 5,000 civilians died in the chemical attack.

The man was not named by prosecutors, but was identified by Dutch media as Frans van Anraat, a chemicals dealer.

Prosecutors said the man had been a suspect since 1989, when he was arrested in Milan, Italy, at the request of the US government. But he was later released and fled to Iraq, where he remained until 2003. After the US-led invasion in March 2003, he returned to the Netherlands via Syria.

The United Nations suspects the man was a major chemical supplier to Saddam’s regime, having made 36 separate shipments, including raw materials for nerve gas and mustard gas originating from the United States and Japan.

The chemicals were shipped via Antwerp, Belgium, through Aqaba in Jordan before reaching Iraq, the prosecution statement said.

Authorities in the United States, Switzerland, Germany, Belgium and Jordan helped in the investigation, and witnesses were interviewed in Britain, Denmark, Jordan and the Netherlands, prosecutors said.

In a 2003 interview with Dutch television program Netwerk, Anraat said he had shipped materials to Iraq but was innocent of wrongdoing.

“This was not my main business, this is something I did in passing,” he said.

“Somewhere once back then, I got the request whether I could deliver certain products to them, which they needed. And because I had a very good relationship with the Iraqi Oil Ministry, and that’s where the request came from, I tried to see if I could do it. And that was successful and we did deliver some materials.”

Thiodyglycol, among the chemicals he is alleged to have shipped, can be used in the production of mustard gas. It also has industrial uses in the textile industry, though not in the large volumes Anraat is accused of shipping.

The US government had banned its export to Iraq.

Anraat “knew the destination and ultimate purpose of the materials he was shipping”, prosecutors said.

A date has not yet been set for Anraat’s trial. Saddam is also awaiting a trial date after being arraigned on July 1 in Baghdad on broad charges that include the killings in Halabja.

“The Halabja attack is an example of Hussein’s policy of systematic destruction of the Kurdish population,” prosecutors said in Anraat’s indictment. “It appears from official Iraqi documents that the operation was intended by Hussein’s government to wipe out the Kurds.”