[The shipments originated in the United States, were shipped to Europe and
reached Iraq after passing through Belgium's Antwerp port and Aqaba in
Jordan.]
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http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=307795
Dutch Arrest Saddam's Suspected Nerve Gas Supplier
Reuters
Dec 7, 2004 - By Wendel Broere
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Police have arrested a Dutch national once sought by
the United States on suspicion of supplying thousands of tons of ingredients
for mustard gas and nerve gas to the Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein.
"The man is suspected of supplying thousands of tons of raw materials for
chemical weapons between 1984 and 1988 to the former regime in Baghdad," the
public prosecution service said in a statement Tuesday.
The 62 year-old suspect, identified as Frans van Anraat on Dutch television,
was arrested in Amsterdam Monday. The United Nations described him as
Saddam's most important middleman for acquiring chemical materials,
prosecutors said.
"The chemical weapons were used by the Iraqi government in the war against
Iran and against the Kurdish population in north Iraq," the statement said.
Iraq used chemical weapons to kill 5,000 Iraqi Kurds in the town of Halabja
in 1988 and fought a brutal war with Iran from 1980-1988.
Van Anraat is suspected of breaching the law of war and of complicity to
genocide, and will be brought before a court in the Dutch town of Arnhem
later this week.
He is suspected of having had direct contact with Iraqi authorities and using
financial fronts to cover his tracks, according to the international
investigation which led to the arrest.
He worked through a Panamanian company based in Lugano, Switzerland,
according to investigations by authorities in the Netherlands, the United
States, Switzerland, Italy, Germany, Belgium and Jordan.
The inquiry centered on 36 deliveries of raw materials for chemical weapons.
The ingredients for mustard gas and nerve gas came from Japan and the United
States.
A criminal investigation by U.S. customs authorities based in Baltimore a few
years ago found that Van Anraat had been involved in four shipments of
thiodiglycol, an industrial chemical used in making mustard gas, to Iraq.
The shipments originated in the United States, were shipped to Europe and
reached Iraq after passing through Belgium's Antwerp port and Aqaba in
Jordan.
Washington had asked the Dutch government to arrest Van Anraat in December
1997, but police could not track him down, according to a transcript of
parliamentary questions to the Dutch Interior Minister last year.
The request for his arrest was withdrawn in November 2000, without an
explanation.
Van Anraat was detained in Milan in January 1989 following a U.S. request,
but he was released after two months. He then headed to Iraq where it is
thought he stayed until the U.S.-led invasion of 2003 when he returned to the
Netherlands through Syria, the public prosecution said.
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