Posted on 06/30/2009 1:01:51 PM PDT by xzins
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 delivering was being used for mustard gas," Van Dorst said. ...
(Excerpt) Read more at lasvegassun.com ...
Van Anraat was convicted of complicity in war crimes but cleared of genocide.He arrived home in the Netherlands in 2003, ending decades of involvement with Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq.
Previously, he had fled from Italy to Iraq in 1989.
His relationship with the deposed Iraqi leader led Dutch prosecutors to accuse him of directly supplying thousands of tons of base materials for chemical weapons used in the 1980s.
Among the chemicals van Anraat was accused of supplying was thiodiglycol, a chemical solvent used in the textile industry and in the manufacture of mustard gas.
He was found guilty of arranging 36 shipments - a total of 538 tons - from the US via the Belgian port of Antwerp, through Aqaba in Jordan to Iraq.
Prosecutors said van Anraat had been a suspect since 1989, when he was arrested in Milan at the request of the US Government.
He was released pending a decision on his extradition, and fled to Iraq, where he remained until 2003.
After the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, he returned to the Netherlands.
Stopwapenhandel.com: http://www.stopwapenhandel.org/publicaties/boekenbrochures/iraksummary.html
For many years, the Dutch businessman Frans van Anraat is the main supplier for Iraq’s chemical weapons programme. He takes opportunity of the gap created since 1984, by the new export legislation. In 1989, he is arrested in Milan, at the request of the American(!) authorities. He manages to escape to Baghdad while awaiting his trial. It will take almost another 15 years before he is being arrested after all. Much of the time in between, he allegedly leads a comfortable life in Bagdad, as a ward of the Iraqi regime. According to American customs, during his stay in Bagdad he continues his activities and purchases precursors for Iraq’s production of mustard gas and nerve gasses from abroad. In 1997 he is interrogated by UNSCOM. With the American-British invasion in 2003 he leaves Iraq fearing for this life. The Dutch embassy provides him with a laissez-passer and he settles in Amsterdam.
Times Online: Dec 7, 2004 http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article400177.ece
In 1989 Mr van Anraat was arrested by Italian police at his home in Milan on a warrant from US Customs. They accused him of shipping 528 tons of thiodiglycol, a chemical commonly used in the textile industry, from a company in Maryland to Iraq.When combined with hydrochloric acid, thiodiglycol produces mustard gas, a chemical agent first used in First World War which causes severe blistering, attacks the eyes and lungs and often kills or blinds its victims.
The United Nations believes that Mr van Anraat was one of the main foreign suppliers to Iraq, making 36 shipments of potentially lethal chemicals to Iraq from companies in the West.
Mr van Anraat was released from custody in Italy and then fled to Iraq where he lived as a fugitive in a villa in Baghdad. He reportedly was given a job working for the Ministry of Military Industrialisation and was occasionally sighted around the city driving a white Oldsmobile and in the company of his Moroccan girlfriend.
WMD Around the World: http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/iraq/agency/mimi.htm
Hussain Kamil, besides heading the MIB and MIMI, was also head of the Secret Service Organization [SSO], which had responsibility for protecting Saddam Hussein and for keeping track of other Iraq intelligence organizations. The convert techniques Kamil learned at the SSO would become valuable tools in his quest to obtain sophisticated Western technology despite growing obstacles. Through this organization, he set up the clandestine technology procurement network that was essential to Iraq's success. A key member of the Secret Service Organization was Safa Al-Habobi, who had direct responsibility for making the procurement scheme work. Safa Al-Habobi was the mastermind behind MIMI's procurement efforts, and a director general of the NASSR weapons complex.
MIMI used a series of stated-owned organizations to buy and build the military power Saddam desired for Iraq. There were at least a dozen organizations operated by MIMI that bought Western technology and goods for the weapons program. Under MIMI, Iraq established a complex defense industrial plan that encompassed not only military related production facilities but also government enterprises primarily devoted to civilian production. MIMI can be thought of as a dual structure holding company divided between civilian and defense components.
...The procurement network, which operated through front companies situated in Europe and the United States, used the BNL loans to supply Iraqi missile, chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs with industrial goods such as computer controlled machine tools, computers, scientific instruments, special alloy steel and aluminum, chemicals, and other industrial goods
Van Anraat lived in Iraq for 14 years until 2003 working for Saddam in the Wmd secretive group MIMI.
No reason to worry about chemical recipes quickly produced from there, was there?
But Saddam had no WMD!!!!!
/s
Amazing they did not use this in 1990-91. Glad they didn’t, my son was there.
We all know Sadaam had no interest in WMD's, so he must have been there to start a chain of pizzerias or something.
[. . .so he must have been there to start a chain of pizzerias or something.]
A wooden shoe factory.
How does this report reconcile with the liberals and socialist's assertion that the United States supplied Saddam Hussein with chemical weapons?
He bought the textile chemical from the US, had it shipped to Holland, and then “distributed” it from there.
Correction: had it shipped to Belgium
The question I asked was :
How does this report reconcile with the liberals and socialist's assertion that the United States supplied Saddam Hussein with chemical weapons?
I had assumed by saying the United States one would know I meant the United State's government. The reason for the assumption is because that is the liberals and socialist's assertion. Should I have been clearer?
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