  | You have information to share ?
Or mistakes to correct ?
click here...
|
|
| |  | | Frans Van Anraat | | | context : | Iraq  | | judgement place : | Netherlands | | status : | Sentenced | | particulars : | Found guilty of complicity in war crimes and sentenced to 15 years' imprisonment on 23 December 2005; sentence increased to 17 years by a Dutch Appeals court on 9 May 2007; sentence upheld but shortened by 6 months by the Dutch Supreme Court on 30 June 2009 | | position : | Businessman |
|
| | | | Frans Van Anraat, born in 1942, is a Dutch businessman. It was alleged that he provided Saddam Hussein's regime with chemical supplies which were used in the attacks on the Kurds in 1988, especially in Halabja, and against the Iranian town of Sardasht in 1987 and 1988.
The Iraqi regime used poison gases against Iranians in the Iran-Iraq war and, most infamously, during "Operation Anfal" in Iraqi Kurdistan between February and September 1988. Tens of thousands of civilians in Kurdistan were killed or maimed in the operation, including the 5000 massacred in Halabja in March that year.
It was alleged that Frans Van Anraat was aware of the final purpose for the base materials he supplied. According to the prosecution, Frans Van Anraat was "suspected of delivering thousands of tons of raw materials for chemical weapons to the former regime in Baghdad between 1984 and 1988". United Nations weapons inspectors reported that Van Anraat was an important middleman supplying Iraq with chemical agents.
A past criminal investigation by U.S. customs authorities based in Baltimore found Van Anraat had been involved in four shipments to Iraq of thiodiglycol, an industrial chemical which can be used to make mustard gas. It also has civilian uses. The chemicals were said to have been shipped via the Belgian port of Antwerp, through Aqaba in Jordan to Iraq.
Although the suspect did not seem to have broken any Dutch export laws, prosecutors intended to prove that he knew that the chemicals he had shipped would be turned into poison gas by the Iraqis and used against Saddam's enemies.
Van Anraat had previously been arrested in 1989 in Milan, Italy at the request of the U.S. government, but fled to Iraq after being released and remained there until 2003.
After the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, Van Anraat returned to the Netherlands via Syria.
Van Anraat was arrested by Dutch officials at his Amsterdam home on December 7, 2004, just as he was apparently planning to flee the country. | |    | | Trial Watch would like to remind its users that any person charged by national or international authorities is presumed innocent until proven guilty. | |  |  | | last time seen : | | | Rotterdam (Netherlands) | | | judgement period : | | | 21.11.2005 - 30.06.2009 | | | charges : | | | Genocide
War crimes | | | profile last modified : | | | 21.02.2010 |
| |
| | |
|
|
