Frans van Anraat

Frans Cornelis Adrianus van Anraat (born August 9, 1942 in Den Helder ) is a Dutch entrepreneur and war criminal . In 2005 he was sentenced to 17 years in prison for delivering thousands of tons of chemicals to Iraq to produce poison gas in the 1980s , which were used against Kurds and in the first Gulf War , among other things .

Life

Beginnings in chemicals trading

Frans van Anraat was born the son of a member of the Navy. He broke off his studies as a laboratory assistant and left the Netherlands in the early 1970s. He then worked in Italy , Switzerland and Singapore as a technical consultant for engineering firms that built chemical factories in Iraq, which was his first contact with the chemicals trade. He then founded the company FCA Contractor (based on his initials) based in Bissone , Switzerland. From 1984 to 1988, as a middleman with the help of his company, he supplied thousands of tons of chemicals to the Saddam Hussein regime , including thiodiglycol , which can be used for mustard gas and nerve gas . A substantial part of these chemicals were brought from Baltimore via Frans van Anraat to Aqaba and finally to Iraq. The Iraqi regime carried out the airborne poison gas attack on Halabja with nerve gas on the northern Iraqi town of Halabja on March 16, 1988 , in which approximately 5,000 Kurds died and 10,000 were injured.

In a television interview on November 6, 2003, van Anraat denied that he knew what the raw material could be used for and said that he had also seen no reason to inform the Dutch authorities about the trade. He also did not see himself as complicit in the mass murder of the Kurds. Rather, he presented himself as a businessman who delivered what his customers asked for and didn't feel responsible for what they did with the delivery.

arrest

Van Anraat was arrested in Milan on January 27, 1989, but was able to escape when he was briefly at large. He fled to Iraq and lived there for 14 years under the name Faris Mansur Rashid el Bassas ( The Courageous and Intelligent Cloth Merchant ). His company FCA Contractor was dissolved in 1992. On December 22, 1997, the United States requested his extradition from the Netherlands, but on November 20, 2000, the extradition request was withdrawn without giving any reason. In March 2003 he returned to the Netherlands via Syria because of the US-led invasion of Iraq . Because he was no longer considered wanted - he was the only Dutch person on the US list of the most wanted people - he could not be refused entry. He settled in a simple apartment in Amsterdam , where he looked after his demented mother. Police officers from the National Research Service arrested him on suspicion of complicity in war crimes and genocide when it became known that he was trying to flee the Netherlands.

Condemnation

On January 27, 2005, Frans van Anraat's custody was overturned, but the Interior Ministry successfully appealed this decision. On November 21, 2005, the criminal trial began in a court in The Hague . On December 23, 2005, Frans van Anraat was sentenced to 15 years' imprisonment - the maximum sentence - for complicity in war crimes. Thousands of people were killed with its chemicals in the poison gas attacks in Iran and Iraq. The court did not consider a genocide conviction possible because there was no solid evidence that van Anraat actually knew that his chemicals should be used to produce poisonous gas.

Van Anraat does not feel responsible for the use of poison gas made from the basic chemicals he supplied to Saddam Hussein. "A manufacturer of ammunition is also not responsible for anything like daar een moord mee wordt gepleegd" (A manufacturer of ammunition is also not responsible if it is used to commit murder), he argued.

Immediately after the verdict, Frans van Anraat's lawyer let it be known that his client was appealing. The Interior Ministry also appealed. From April 2, 2007, the Court of Appeal (Dutch: Gerechtshof ) in The Hague was hearing the appeal. On May 9, 2007, Frans van Anraat was sentenced to 17 years imprisonment for complicity in war crimes, two years more than the Ministry of the Interior had requested and which he had received in the first instance. He was acquitted of the charge of complicity in genocide.

See also

• Dual use

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} Frans Van Anraat. In: Trial Watch. October 19, 2012, archived from the original on June 27, 2015 ; accessed on October 28, 2018 (original website no longer available).  
2. ↑ Court sends Saddam's poison gas supplier behind bars. In: Spiegel Online. December 23, 2005, accessed August 21, 2009 .  
3. ↑ ^{a b c} Udo van Lengen: In secret services. In: Jungle World. April 6, 2005, accessed August 21, 2009 .  
4. ↑ Netherlands: Trial against alleged poison gas supplier Van Anraat. In: Euronews. March 18, 2005, accessed August 21, 2009 .  
5. ↑ Saddam's 'Dutch link'. In: BBC News. December 23, 2005, accessed August 21, 2009 .  
6. ↑ First judgment on Kurdish massacre: court evaluates the poison gas attack as genocide. In: News. December 23, 2005, accessed August 21, 2009 .  
7. ↑ door behanger: the end of the beam is aan het Marco-Bakkeren. In: Retecool. March 29, 2009, archived from the original on April 2, 2009 ; Retrieved on August 21, 2009 (Dutch, original website no longer available).