Dutch court to free 'Saddam's chemical fixer'

[emad]

Ian Traynor
Saturday January 29, 2005
The Guardian

An appeal judge in The Hague has ordered the release of a Dutch businessman accused of supplying the chemicals to Saddam Hussein that enabled him to gas the Kurds.

The ruling is a setback for Dutch prosecutors seeking to bring their first case of involvement in genocide.

Frans van Anraat was arrested six weeks ago on suspicion of complicity in genocide. He is accused of supplying the chemicals that enabled the Iraqi dictator to make the mustard gas with which he killed and maimed thousands of Kurds in attacksin 1988. About 5,000 were killed in the town of Halabja alone.

Mr Van Anraat, 62, has never denied supplying the chemicals, but says he did not know what they were to be used for.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1401248,00.html