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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...

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...