Free Republic

A Dutch appeals court has sentenced businessman Frans van Anraat to 17 years in jail but did not find him guilty of conspiracy to commit genocide. Van Anraat supplied Saddam Hussein's regime with chemicals used for making poison gas. The Dutch businessman has always maintained that he did not know that the Iraqi regime planned to make chemical weapons. Saddam Hussein used poison gas against Iran during the 1980 to 1988 war and also against Iraq's own Kurdish population. In 2005, van Anraat was sentenced to 15 years in jail for conspiracy to commit war crimes. He was not convicted...

THE HAGUE, Netherlands: A Dutch appeals court is to begin hearing the case Monday of a businessman convicted of war crimes for selling chemicals to Saddam Hussein that the Iraqi dictator used in the mass killings of Kurds. Frans van Anraat, 64, was sentenced to 15 years in prison in December 2005 for selling tons of precursor chemicals that were made into mustard gas and nerve gas unleashed on Kurdish villages in northern Iraq in 1987-88. Van Anraat said he didn't know the chemicals — some of which were purchased in the United States — could be used for anything...

According to security services, a Dutch chemist is suspected to have been involved with the banned weapons program of Saddam Hussein. It is the 60 year old Frans van A. from Den Helder. This was reported by the newspaper 'De Telegraaf' on Saturday. Van A. is probebly hiding in Baghdad, heavily guarded by the Iraqi Republican Guards. He has been under surveillance by the Dutch security service AIVD for several years. According to the AIVD, it is an 'unique situation', because Van A. is one of the few foreigners that has intensive contacts to the regime of Saddam Hussein. Also...

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...