Dutchman Accused Of Genocide Over Iraq Poison Gas

Dutch prosecutors called on Wednesday for a Dutch businessman to be convicted of genocide for selling chemicals to Iraq.

Dutch prosecutors called on Wednesday for a Dutch businessman to be convicted of genocide for selling chemicals to Iraq which were used in deadly gas attacks.

Frans van Anraat is appealing a 15-year jail sentence after he was found guilty in 2005 of complicity in war crimes for supplying raw materials that were used to make poison gas by Saddam Hussein's Iraq in the 1980-1988 war with Iran.

The poison gas was also used against Iraq's own Kurdish population, including an attack on the town of Halabja in 1988 which killed an estimated 5,000 people.

Van Anraat, who was refused release pending the appeal, was acquitted of genocide charges in 2005 as the court then said it could not be proven he knew exactly how the chemicals would be used.

"We are raising the genocide charges again and seeking a 15 years jail sentence for both complicity in war crimes and genocide," a spokeswoman for The Hague public prosecutor said.

The appeals court in The Hague is expected to rule on the case in the first half of May, she said.

An Iraqi prosecutor last December showed the court trying Saddam an internal memo from the president's office which praised van Anraat for supplying Iraq "with rare and banned chemical weapons."

In a magazine interview in 2003, van Anraat admitted to supplying the chemicals but denied knowing they were destined for Iraq and that they would be used to make poison gas. Prosecutors have said he shipped chemicals from the United States to Belgium and from Belgium to Iraq via Jordan. He also shipped chemicals from Japan to Italy, and then overland to Iraq.