Dutchman held for 'Iraq genocide'

7 December, 2004

Prosecutors in the Netherlands say they will charge a 62-year-old Dutchman suspected of assisting ex-Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in genocide.

A spokesman for the chief prosecutor's office said the suspect had supplied Saddam Hussein with thousands of tons of base materials for chemical weapons.

The chemicals were allegedly used in the 1988 Iraqi bombing of Halabja.

It is alleged that suspect Frans van Anraat was aware of the final purpose for the base materials he supplied.

<snip>

The United Nations suspects the man was a major chemical supplier to the former Iraqi regime, having made 36 separate shipments, including mustard gas and nerve gas originating from the United States and Japan.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4074803.stm


My first thought when I saw the title was, gee I didn't know Bush was Dutch. Oh well, shouldn't have gotten my hopes up.

BTW: Seems Frans van Anraat got a fair bit of this stuff from the US and Japan. I wonder if he still has the receipts?

His bosses too.

Fat chance in hell that will ever happen.

only I was wondering if Rumsfeld was Dutch. Couldn't this fellow show that famous photo of Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam as part of his defense? Or maybe this is just the first trial to pave the way to indict members of the Bush maladministration who were involved in this in the 80s?

The United Nations (news - web sites) suspects van Anraat was a major chemical supplier to Saddam's regime, having made 36 separate shipments, including mustard gas and nerve gas originating from the United States and Japan, prosecutors said.

From textile sizing to poisoning:
how thiodiglycol was made to lose its way


There are two basic routes to manufacture mustard gas, one of which uses the industrial chemical thiodiglycol. As Iraq scaled up its chemical weapons program it found it easier to buy precursors than to make them. The easiest place to do this was in the Far East where export regulations are particularly slack. Iraq and Iran (as it tried to obtain the ability to retaliate in kind) stripped Japan of its stocks of the mustard gas precursor thiodiglycol by 1986.

Iran then tried to use the large petrochemical company Phillips Petroleum as a source, but was rebuffed when Phillips became uneasy about the deal. The broker for Iran then picked the small New Jersey-based company Alcolac International as a single source. Morton Thiokol subsequently declined to supply thiodiglycol to Iraq and Alcolac then had the opportunity to also supply Baghdad. Alcolac turned out to be a reliable and compliant source for both sides until the operations were broken up by U.S. Customs in mid-1988. Procurement for Teheran was led by an Iranian diplomat, Karim Ali Sobhani, and a Czech-born German (Peter Walaschek). A Dutch national, Frans van Anraat, and a Japanese national, Charles Tanaka, were responsible obtaining thiodiglycol for Iraq.

Export of thiodiglycol from the United States is restricted because of its use in the synthesis of chemical weapons and Tanaka reasoned that having one US company purchase it from another was not going to provoke interest the way a foreign transaction would. Several of the purchases for Iraq started on the road by being sold to US companies that Tanaka had friendly dealings with. The first dealings were with the California company Technalloy Chemical Corp., but transfer of the thiodiglycol across country was time-consuming and expensive. Later shipments used a front company (an empty warehouse in Brooklyn, New York) called Nu Kraft Mercantile that was owned by United Steel and Strip Corp. From Nu Kraft, Iraqi shipments were usually diverted through Europe and Aqaba as the final port before delivery to Baghdad. The Iranians used Singapore and Hong Kong as entrepôts with Pakistan as the last stop before unloading at Bandar Abbas.

http://www.cbwinfo.com/General/Proliferation/Thiodiglycol.html


Gee, Bandar Abbas? Where have I heard that name before? Bandar, Bandar? Oh yeah, that guy Bandar Bush. I wonder if there is any connection?

http://www.nu.nl/news.jsp?n=452285&c=23 (in dutch)

Talks about thousands of tons of supply materials shipped between 1984 and 1988, trafficked using a Panamanian company in Lugano Switzerland.

At the request of the US, the Dutchman was arrested in Milan on the 26th of January 1989. After spending 2 months awaiting extradition, he was released and fled to Iraq, where he remained until the 2003 invasion. He then fled to the Netherlands via Syria.

He will be charged later this week in Arnhem.

Dutch authorities said. For unknown reasons the US withdrew their extradition request for him in 2000.


When the US-led coalition entered Iraq, Van Anraat escaped to the Netherlands where he was arrested on Monday.


~snip~

Dutch authorities had known since 2003 that Van Anraat was back in the Netherlands but initially they said he could not be prosecuted because the US had withdrawn its request and because at the time when the raw materials for the mustard gas were supplied it was not breaking Dutch law or the chemical weapons convention.


Van Anraat is now being prosecuted because he violated the international laws and customs of war and the genocide convention.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20041207/wl_mideast_afp/netherlands_iraq_warcrimes&cid=1514&ncid=1480


Wonder what this guy really knows.