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The Kurdish Halabja Centre CHAK has submitted new and possibly incriminating evidence in the appeal case against Dutch businessman Frans van Anraat. The documents were reportedly supplied by the Iraqi tribunal that sentenced former dictator Saddam Hussein to death. In December last year, Frans van Anraat was sentenced to 15 years in jail. The court in The Hague found him guilty of supplying materials for chemical weapons to the Saddam Hussein regime in the 1980s. He was acquitted of complicity in genocide because he reportedly did not know that Saddam Hussein intended to use poison gas on the Iraqi population....

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...

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...

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...