Prosecutors in Amsterdam are charging an arms dealer as an accomplice to genocide for selling lethal chemicals to Saddam Hussein between 1984 and 1988.
The suspect, Frans van Anraat, a 62-year-old chemicals dealer who was arrested Monday in Amsterdam, will face charges for “violating the laws of war and involvement in genocide,” said Wim de Bruin of the national prosecutor’s office.
Prosecutors said he had been a suspect since 1989, when he was arrested in Milan at the request of the United States government. But he was later released and fled to Iraq, where he remained until 2003. After the American-led invasion in 2003, he returned to the Netherlands, via Syria.
“The man is suspected of delivering thousands of tons of raw materials for chemical weapons to the former regime in Baghdad between 1984 and 1988,” prosecutors said in a statement.
Here’s a list of materials exported to Iraq from the United States around the same time.
(Edited: typo).