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The Dutch Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld the war crimes conviction of a businessman for selling chemicals to Saddam Hussein that his regime in Iraq turned into poison gas and unleashed on Kurds and Iranians. ... In May 2007 a Hague appeals court upheld Van Anraat's 2005 conviction for complicity in war crimes and increased his sentence from 15 to 17 years. ... Presiding Judge Leo van Dorst said that from the mid-1980s Van Anraat was Iraq's sole supplier of a chemical called TDG, or thiodiglycol, for its mustard gas production program. "The suspect knew ... the TDG he was...

A Dutch court today sentenced businessman Frans van Anraat to 15 years in prison for supplying ingredients for chemical weapons that former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein used to kill thousands of Kurds in Iraq and Iran (see GSN, Dec. 9). While the court in The Hague convicted the 63-year-old van Anraat on war crimes counts, it found him not guilty of genocide charges, Reuters reported. “His deliveries facilitated the attacks and constitute a very serious war crime. He cannot counter with the argument that this would have happened even without his contribution,” the presiding judge said. The prison term was...

Al-Qaeda Draws New Recruits Via Internet Al-Qaeda is using the Internet to recruit vulnerable young people to its terrorist network, according to a programme aired on Saudi Arabian TV late on Tuesday. Umm Osama, the founder of al-Qaeda's first women-only website, al-Khansa, joined several others on the programme to discuss how they renounced jihadist ideology. Among those who sought a response to this question was an imam from the Medina mosque, Saleh Ibn Awad al-Mudamsi, and the father of a young al-Qaeda suspect held in an Iraqi prison. Read More Qaeda Targets U.S. Oil Interests in North Africa U.S....

U.S. to Offer Turkey Help on PKK The U.S. is to offer Turkey a package of measures to dissuade Ankara from mounting a large-scale military incursion into Iraq to attack PKK Kurdish guerrillas, who have killed scores of Turkish soldiers in recent weeks. Ahead of a meeting in Washington on Monday between President George W. Bush and Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s prime minister, U.S. officials said Ankara would have to get concrete American help to combat the PKK, which has bases in northern Iraq from where it frequently launches attacks into Turkey. “Erdogan has to go back with the...

An explosion at a Syrian military complex in July which killed 15 soldiers was a bid to arm a chemical warhead and was not caused by a heatwave as Damascus said, according to Jane's Defence Weekly. Syria had said temperatures up to 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit) caused an ammunition dump to explode, killing the soldiers and wounding another 50. But Jane's Defence, quoting Syrian defence sources, said the blast occurred as Syrian weapons experts, with Iranian backing, were attempting to activate a 500-km-range (300-mile-range) "Scud C" missile with a mustard gas warhead. "The explosion occurred when fuel caught alight...

Military scientists tested mustard gas on Indians · Hundreds of soldiers used in experiments · Illnesses caused by carcinogen not tracked Rob Evans Saturday September 1, 2007 The Guardian British military scientists sent hundreds of Indian soldiers into gas chambers and exposed them to mustard gas, documents uncovered by the Guardian have revealed. The Guardian understands that the British military did not check up on the Indian soldiers after the experiments to see if they developed any illnesses. It is now recognised that mustard gas can cause cancer and other diseases. Many suffered severe burns on their skin, including their...

Hundreds of Iraqi policemen fell sick from poisoning tonight at their base in the southern part of the country after the evening meal breaking their daily Ramadan fast, raising fears of a new type of terrorist attack – perhaps even involving chemical, biological or nerve agents. Some of the policemen reportedly began bleeding from the ears and nose immediately after the meal... The suddenness and severity of the mass poisoning immediately raised fears of a new kind of terrorist attack for the nation of Iraq where weapons of mass destruction have not been used since Saddam Hussein was in power....

I am a high school junior and currently have a teacher who believes Al Qaeda and Iraq are not linked. I would like documents proving links between Al Qaeda and Iraq, documents of democrats declaring Iraq as dangerous, documents listing numbers of terrorists (islamo-fascitsts) killed, documents with numbers of Iraqis killed under Saddam, and documents of foreign inteligence agencies declaring Iraq was seeking WMD's. I want to thankyou all for all your help, and of course it would be nice if the sources were well-respected, but any documents can be helpful. Also documents proving bias of the MSM would also...

Alan Colmes, last night: “Jim Angle, who reported this for FOX News, quotes a defense official who says these were pre-1991 weapons that could not have been fired as designed because they’d already been degraded ..." Here's what you find when you do some digging on the Internet about mustard gas: a letter from two United Nations weapons inspectors to the President of the Security Council from 1999: " a dozen mustard-filled shells were recovered at a former CW storage facility in the period 1997-1998. The chemical sampling of these munitions, in April 1998, revealed that the mustard was still...

Our story starts 90 years ago. The Great War claimed over 15 million lives and focused on a narrow strip of land in Belgium and France. This intense trench warfare led to constant shelling by both sides, but not every bomb fired exploded. Hundreds of thousands failed to detonate. Today the remains of the Belgian front line can still be seen - some trenches are still visible, and visitors can walk past the barbed wire and inspect the rusting military hardware left behind. And it is those shells that are now resurfacing and presenting a new threat. * Every year...

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Apognosis - Iraq WMD Evidence "...How can anyone ignore the evidence cited by a senior counter-proliferation official that meetings did in fact occur between Niger officials and would-be buyers from Iraq, North Korea and three other countries, and that the uranium was to be mined from abandoned - and hence unregulated and unmonitored - uranium mines in Niger?" "...The US Army bomb team that investigated the device said it looked like all the other conventional munitions rigged as roadside IEDs, it bore only the markings of the conventional artillery shells they had been handling on a routine basis. It...

Lord, Keep our Troops forever in Your care Give them victory over the enemy... Grant them a safe and swift return... Bless those who mourn the lost. . FReepers from the Foxhole join in prayer for all those serving their country at this time. .................................................................. .................... ........................................... U.S. Military History, Current Events and Veterans Issues Where Duty, Honor and Countryare acknowledged, affirmed and commemorated. Our Mission: The FReeper Foxhole is dedicated to Veterans of our Nation's military forces and to others who are affected in their relationships with Veterans. In the FReeper Foxhole, Veterans or their family members should...

AMSTERDAM — A court in The Hague ordered the release from jail on Thursday of a Dutchman suspected of exporting raw materials to Iraq to assist in Saddam Hussein's production of chemical weapons. The suspect, Franz van A., is accused of supplying the ousted Iraqi dictator with chemicals for the production of mustard gas that was used against the Kurds in northern Iraq. The appeals court in The Hague did not give a reason why it ordered his release. Court spokesman Roland Regout told news agency Novum that the decision was made during a hearing in chambers. Such hearings are...

On March 16, 1988, 5,000 residents of Halabja, a Kurdish city in eastern Iraq, were killed and 10,000 injured when Saddam Hussein's army attacked with chemical weapons -- perhaps the largest-scale use of such weapons against a civilian population in modern times. That morning, Iraqi Air Force planes bombed the city with a lethal chemical cocktail of mustard gas and sarin, tabun and VX nerve agents. Two days ago, the man accused of overseeing the attack, Gen. Ali Hasan al-Majid, also known as Chemical Ali, appeared before a judicial tribunal in Baghdad. He is likely to go on trial next...

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) Prosecutors said on Tuesday they will charge a Dutch chemicals dealer as an accomplice to genocide for supplying Saddam Hussein with lethal chemicals used in the 1988 chemical attack on a Kurdish town that killed an estimated 5,000 civilians. Wim de Bruin of the national prosecutor's office said the suspect, who was arrested in Amsterdam on Monday, will face charges ''for violating the laws of war and involvement in genocide.'' Prosecutors said Frans van Anraat, a 62-year-old chemicals dealer, had been a suspect since 1989, when he was arrested in Milan, Italy, at the request of the...

A MAN suspected of helping former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein commit war crimes and genocide by supplying him with materials for chemical weapons, has been arrested by the Netherlands authorities. Prosecutors said the 62-year-old man, identified as Frans van Anraat by Dutch television, was arrested at his Amsterdam home on Monday as he prepared to leave the Netherlands. "According to the United Nations, the Dutchman is one of the most important middlemen in Iraq’s acquisition of chemical material," Dutch prosecutors said in a statement. "The man is suspected of supplying thousands of tonnes of raw materials for chemical weapons between...

(CNSNews.com) - Iraqi intelligence documents, confiscated by U.S. forces and obtained by CNSNews.com, show numerous efforts by Saddam Hussein's regime to work with some of the world's most notorious terror organizations, including al Qaeda, to target Americans. They demonstrate that Saddam's government possessed mustard gas and anthrax, both considered weapons of mass destruction, in the summer of 2000, during the period in which United Nations weapons inspectors were not present in Iraq. And the papers show that Iraq trained dozens of terrorists inside its borders. One of the Iraqi memos contains an order from Saddam for his intelligence service to...

The Unlucky Senator Kerry October 11, 2004 Alan Caruba by, www.anxietycenter.com Once you get passed the question of personality and character, it is fairly easy to see why Senator John F. Kerry will lose the forthcoming election. It’s what you don’t see that is the best predictor. What you don’t see are armies of anti-war protesters in the streets of American cities. Americans, whether they call themselves liberal or conservative, appear to be united when it comes down to the question of waging war against the Islamic Jihad. They may disagree on where or how, but they agree they do...

Iraqi intelligence documents, confiscated by U.S. forces and obtained by CNSNews.com , show numerous efforts by Saddam Hussein's regime to work with some of the world's most notorious terror organizations, including al Qaeda, to target Americans. They demonstrate that Saddam's government possessed mustard gas and anthrax, both considered weapons of mass destruction, in the summer of 2000, during the period in which United Nations weapons inspectors were not present in Iraq. And the papers show that Iraq trained dozens of terrorists inside its borders. One of the Iraqi memos contains an order from Saddam for his intelligence service to support...