The Supreme Court of the Netherlands yesterday affirmed that a businessman who sold chemicals to Saddam Hussein is guilty of war crimes, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, May 10, 2007).
Frans van Anraat supplied the former Iraqi regime with material used to produce chemical weapons that were employed against Iraqi Kurds and Iranians during the 1980s, authorities said. In earlier proceedings, prosecutors argued that van Anraat knew how Hussein was using his product.
"The suspect knew ... the [thiodiglycol] he was delivering was being used for mustard gas," said Presiding Judge Leo van Dorst. "The suspect knew that the poison gas would be used in the (Iran-Iraq) war."
Van Anraat had been sentenced to 17 years in prison. The court lopped six months off that sentence since his case took an unusually long time to process. The court also threw out a compensation appeal filed by 16 victims on the grounds that it was too complicated.
"The most important thing is that he stays in prison," said Danya Mohammad, a survivor of Hussein regime's mustard and nerve agent strike that killed thousands of residents the Kurdish community of Halabja
(Mike Corder, Associated Press/Yahoo! News, June 30).