In the first trial involving the mass killing of Iraqi Kurds with chemical weapons, a Dutch court on Friday sentenced a supplier of the weapon ingredients to 15 years in jail.
The judges convicted Frans van Anraat, 63, a Dutch businessman, of complicity in war crimes because they said he had known that the materials he sold to Iraq during the rule of former president Saddam Hussein could be used to make lethal poison gas.
The court acquitted him of complicity in genocide, because it said it could not be proved that he knew that the chemicals would be used for genocide. The raw materials were sent to Iraq before they were used in the mass attack against Kurdish villagers, the court said.
PHOTO: EPA
Van Anraat received the maximum sentence for complicity in war crimes. But the judges' decision said that "the crimes are of such a grave nature that even the maximum sentence cannot do them justice."
A group of Kurds, some of whom had joined the lawsuit as relatives of victims, applauded in court when the sentence was handed down, and several dozen others played music and danced outside the courthouse in The Hague afterward, witnesses said.
Lawyers involved in the monthlong trial said it was the first time a court had ruled that the attack by Saddam's troops on the town of Halabja in 1988 was genocide. The attack, which was part of a broader campaign against Iraqi Kurds, killed more than 5,000 people in a single day, while blinding and maiming many others.
The massacre also forms part of the charges brought against Saddam, who is now on trial in Baghdad in connection with a different large-scale killing.
Van Anraat's case is also the first in which a supplier of potentially harmful ingredients had been charged with genocide and convicted in connection with war crimes under a new mix of national and international law. In the past, the delivery of goods like the chemicals that van Anraat sold to Iraq despite export bans would probably have been dealt with as an economic crime, said Heikelina Verrijn-Stuart, a Dutch specialist in international law.
"This sends an important signal to suppliers and traders," she said.
"It says that they, too, can be prosecuted and held accountable for war crimes," she added.
The indictment of van Anraat said he had used a Panamanian company based in Switzerland to try to cover up his dealings with Iraq.
The indictment said the chemicals could be used as ingredients in mustard and nerve gases, which eventually were used against the Kurdish population in Iraq and during Iraq's war against Iran in the 1980s.
Prosecutors said van Anraat, acting as a middleman, had used schemes to ship the chemicals from Japanese producers via countries including Italy, Luxembourg, Switzerland and Singapore. He sent them under labels like "flame retardants."
During the trial, he admitted to selling the goods, but maintained that he thought they would be used in the textile industry. Several witnesses, including a Japanese business associate of van Anraat, testified that he knew of the materials' potentially lethal use.
THE ‘MONSTER’: The Philippines on Saturday sent a vessel to confront a 12,000-tonne Chinese ship that had entered its exclusive economic zone The Philippines yesterday said it deployed a coast guard ship to challenge Chinese patrol boats attempting to “alter the existing status quo” of the disputed South China Sea. Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Commodore Jay Tarriela said Chinese patrol ships had this year come as close as 60 nautical miles (111km) west of the main Philippine island of Luzon. “Their goal is to normalize such deployments, and if these actions go unnoticed and unchallenged, it will enable them to alter the existing status quo,” he said in a statement. He later told reporters that Manila had deployed a coast guard ship to the area
A group of Uyghur men who were detained in Thailand more than one decade ago said that the Thai government is preparing to deport them to China, alarming activists and family members who say the men are at risk of abuse and torture if they are sent back. Forty-three Uyghur men held in Bangkok made a public appeal to halt what they called an imminent threat of deportation. “We could be imprisoned and we might even lose our lives,” the letter said. “We urgently appeal to all international organizations and countries concerned with human rights to intervene immediately to save us from
RISING TENSIONS: The nations’ three leaders discussed China’s ‘dangerous and unlawful behavior in the South China Sea,’ and agreed on the importance of continued coordination Japan, the Philippines and the US vowed to further deepen cooperation under a trilateral arrangement in the face of rising tensions in Asia’s waters, the three nations said following a call among their leaders. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and outgoing US President Joe Biden met via videoconference on Monday morning. Marcos’ communications office said the leaders “agreed to enhance and deepen economic, maritime and technology cooperation.” The call followed a first-of-its-kind summit meeting of Marcos, Biden and then-Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida in Washington in April last year that led to a vow to uphold international
US president-elect Donald Trump is not typically known for his calm or reserve, but in a craftsman’s workshop in rural China he sits in divine contemplation. Cross-legged with his eyes half-closed in a pose evoking the Buddha, this porcelain version of the divisive US leader-in-waiting is the work of designer and sculptor Hong Jinshi (洪金世). The Zen-like figures — which Hong sells for between 999 and 20,000 yuan (US$136 to US$2,728) depending on their size — first went viral in 2021 on the e-commerce platform Taobao, attracting national headlines. Ahead of the real-estate magnate’s inauguration for a second term on Monday next week,
RSS