THE HAGUE, Nov 21: A Dutch businessman sold chemicals to Iraq knowing Saddam Hussein would use them to carry out poison gas attacks that killed thousands of people, prosecutors told the start of his trial on Monday. Frans van Anraat, 63, is charged with complicity in war crimes and genocide for supplying agents for poison gas used by Iraq in the 1980-1988 war with Iran and against its own Kurdish population, including a 1988 attack on the town of Halabja.

“He is being accused of delivering raw materials necessary to build Saddam Hussein’s chemical weapons. The use of those weapons by the regime in Baghdad led to the death of thousands in Iraq and Iran,” prosecutor Fred Teeven told the court.

“He is complicit in serious international crimes.”

Prosecutors accuse the Dutchman of shipping chemicals from the United States to Belgium and from there to Iraq via Jordan, and from Japan to Baghdad through Italy.

A key witness statement read out in court suggested he discussed with a Japanese business partner how best to describe the use of the chemicals for something other than weapons, but Van Anraat contested it.

“The declaration by (business partner) Tanaka is incorrect,” Van Anraat said after sitting silently with arms crossed for most of the session.

The court was packed with relatives of Halabja victims and members of Kurdish organisations.

A small group outside the Hague court displayed photographs of Kurdish victims of chemical weapons and held a red banner reading “Genocide Never Again”. The Halabja attack on March 16, 1988, killed an estimated 5,000 people.—Reuters