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Saddam Nerve Gas Case Set to Open in Dutch Court
Fri Mar 18, 2005 02:02 AM ET
ROTTERDAM (Reuters) - A Dutch court opens hearings on Friday against a man accused of helping former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein commit war crimes and genocide by providing him with materials for chemical weapons. Frans van Anraat, 62, is charged with supplying thousands of tonnes of raw materials for chemical weapons used in the 1980-1988 war against Iran and against Iraqi Kurds, including a 1988 attack on the town of Halabja, in which an estimated 5,000 people were killed. Prosecutors say the United Nations has described Van Anraat, who is also charged with complicity in war crimes and genocide, as "one of the most important middlemen in Iraq's acquisition of chemical material." Prosecutors and the defense are expected to discuss preparations for trial at Friday's hearing at a high-security court in the port city of Rotterdam. "The images of the gas attack on the Kurdish city Halabja were a shock. But I did not give the order to do that. How many products, such as bullets do we make in the Netherlands?" Van Anraat said in a 2003 interview with Dutch magazine Revu. Van Anratt was arrested by Dutch officials at his Amsterdam home in December. He was also detained in Milan in January 1989 following a U.S. request but was released after two months. He then went to Iraq where it is thought he stayed until the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, when he returned to the Netherlands through Syria.
The United States said Iraq's suspected weapons of mass destruction were one of its main reasons for going to war in 2003, but it has yet to discover significant stockpiles.
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