The trial of those suspected of illegal armaments deals with Iraq has started at the Mannheim Regional Court. A US businessman of Iraqi origin and four co-defendants are accused of having violated the UN embargo. In 1999, together with an engineer, who has already been convicted, they mediated the sale of equipment for the construction of gun barrels for NBC [nuclear, biological, chemical] weapons to Iraq. The Iraq-born man owns two Jordan-based companies and was arrested in Bulgaria last November.