Frans Cornelis Adrianus van Anraat (born 9 August 1942 in

Den Helder Den Helder () is a municipality and a city in the Netherlands, in the province of North Holland. Den Helder occupies the northernmost point of the North Holland peninsula. It is home to the country's main naval base. From here the Royal TESO fe ...

) is a Dutch war criminal and a businessman. He sold raw materials for the production of

chemical weapons A chemical weapon (CW) is a specialized Ammunition, munition that uses chemicals chemical engineering, formulated to inflict death or harm on humans. According to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), this can be an ...

Iraq Iraq,; ku, عێراق, translit=Êraq officially the Republic of Iraq, '; ku, کۆماری عێراق, translit=Komarî Êraq is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to Iraq–Turkey border, the north, Iran to Iran–Iraq ...

during the reign of

Saddam Hussein Saddam Hussein ( ; ar, صدام حسين, Ṣaddām Ḥusayn; 28 April 1937 – 30 December 2006) was an Iraqi politician who served as the fifth president of Iraq from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003. A leading member of the revolution ...

. In December 2005, a court in

The Hague The Hague ( ; nl, Den Haag or ) is a city and municipality of the Netherlands, situated on the west coast facing the North Sea. The Hague is the country's administrative centre and its seat of government, and while the official capital of ...

convicted him of complicity in war crimes for his role in selling chemical weapons to Saddam's government. He was given a 15-year sentence.Killing of Iraq Kurds 'genocide'
BBC News, 23 December 2005 In 2007, the appeal court sentenced Van Anraat to 17 years in prison. Van Anraat is the only Dutchman ever to appear on the

FBI's most wanted list The FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives is a most wanted list maintained by the United States's Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The list arose from a conversation held in late 1949 between J. Edgar Hoover, Director of the FBI, and William Kin ...

Business in Iraq

In the 1970s, Van Anraat worked at engineering companies in

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...

Switzerland ). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...

and

Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, borde ...

that were building chemical plants in Iraq. Having learned about the trade in chemicals, he founded his own company, "FCA Contractor", based in

Bissone Bissone is a municipality in the district of Lugano, in the canton of Ticino in Switzerland. History Bissone is first mentioned in 735 and again in 854 as ''Blixuni''. In German it was known as ''Byssen'', though that name is no longer used. I ...

. Starting in 1984, he supplied thousands of tons of chemicals to Iraq including the essential raw materials for producing

mustard gas Mustard gas or sulfur mustard is a chemical compound belonging to a family of cytotoxic and blister agents known as mustard agents. The name ''mustard gas'' is technically incorrect: the substance, when dispersed, is often not actually a gas, b ...

and

nerve gas Nerve agents, sometimes also called nerve gases, are a class of organic chemicals that disrupt the mechanisms by which nerves transfer messages to organs. The disruption is caused by the blocking of acetylcholinesterase (AChE), an enzyme that ...

. Both gases were used during the

Iran–Iraq War The Iran–Iraq War was an armed conflict between Iran and Iraq that lasted from September 1980 to August 1988. It began with the Iraqi invasion of Iran and lasted for almost eight years, until the acceptance of United Nations Security Council ...

, between 1980 and 1988, as well as during the

Halabja poison gas attack The Halabja massacre ( ku, Kêmyabarana Helebce کیمیابارانی ھەڵەبجە), also known as the Halabja chemical attack, was a massacre of Kurdish people that took place on 16 March 1988, during the closing days of the Iran–Iraq War ...

the military carried out on Iraqi

Kurds ug:كۇردلار Kurds ( ku, کورد ,Kurd, italic=yes, rtl=yes) or Kurdish people are an Iranian ethnic group native to the mountainous region of Kurdistan in Western Asia, which spans southeastern Turkey, northwestern Iran, northern Ir ...

, in 1988, which killed about 5,000 people and injured 10,000 more. The attack was part of the

Al-Anfal campaign The Anfal campaign; ku, شاڵاوی ئەنفال or the Kurdish genocide was a counterinsurgency operation which was carried out by Ba'athist Iraq from February to September 1988, at the end of the Iran–Iraq War. The campaign targeted rur ...

of the Iraqi regime against Kurds in the north of the country.

Arrest and trial

After Van Anraats arrest upon the request of the US in Italy in 1989, his offices in Switzerland and Italy were searched and documents were confiscated. Van Anraat was released pending his trial and fled to Iraq, where he lived for the next 14 years, was granted the Iraqi nationality and given an Arabic name. When Hussein's regime fell in 2003, Van Anraat returned to the Netherlands. He was arrested on 6 December 2004, for complicity in war crimes and

genocide Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people—usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group—in whole or in part. Raphael Lemkin coined the term in 1944, combining the Greek word (, "race, people") with the Latin ...

. On 23 December 2005, he was sentenced to 15 years in prison for complicity in war crimes, but the court decided that the charges of

complicity in genocide Complicity in genocide is illegal under international law both for individuals, as part of international criminal law, and state parties to the Genocide Convention. The latter was first held in the Bosnian genocide case (2007) in which the Internati ...

could not be substantiated. The court also ruled that the killing of thousands of Kurds in Iraq in the 1980s, was an act of genocide. In the 1948

Geneva Convention upright=1.15, Original document in single pages, 1864 The Geneva Conventions are four treaties, and three additional protocols, that establish international legal standards for humanitarian treatment in war. The singular term ''Geneva Conven ...

, the definition of genocide is "acts committed with the

intent to destroy ''Intent to Destroy: Death, Denial, & Depiction'' is a 2017 documentary film directed by Joe Berlinger about the Armenian genocide. Production Berlinger embedded in the filming crew of '' The Promise'' to shoot ''Intent to Destroy''. The film p ...

, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group". The Dutch court said that it was considered "legally and convincingly proven that the Kurdish population meets the requirement under the Genocide Conventions as an

ethnic group An ethnic group or an ethnicity is a grouping of people who identify with each other on the basis of shared attributes that distinguish them from other groups. Those attributes can include common sets of traditions, ancestry, language, history, ...

. The court has no other conclusion than that these attacks were committed with the intent to destroy the Kurdish population of Iraq." Both the public prosecutor and Van Anraat appealed the verdict. In May 2007, the appeals court sentenced Van Anraat to 17 years in prison. The charge of complicity in multiple war crimes explains the extra two years, but he was not found guilty of complicity in genocide. In June 2007, the Dutch Supreme Court confirmed the sentence but reduced the imprisonment to 16 years and 6 months.

Informant for the Dutch secret service

Shortly after the arrest of Van Anraat, several Dutch newspapers reported that Van Anraat had been an informant for the Dutch

secret service A secret service is a government agency, intelligence agency, or the activities of a government agency, concerned with the gathering of intelligence data. The tasks and powers of a secret service can vary greatly from one country to another. For ...

, the

AIVD The General Intelligence and Security Service ( nl, Algemene Inlichtingen- en Veiligheidsdienst, AIVD; ) is the intelligence and security agency of the Netherlands, tasked with domestic, foreign and signals intelligence and protecting national se ...

. According to the Dutch press, Van Anraat received protection from the AIVD and was placed in a

safehouse A safe house (also spelled safehouse) is, in a generic sense, a secret place for sanctuary or suitable to hide people from the law, hostile actors or actions, or from retribution, threats or perceived danger. It may also be a metaphor. Histori ...

of the

Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations The Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations ( nl, link=no, Ministerie van Binnenlandse Zaken en Koninkrijksrelaties; BZK) is the Netherlands' ministry responsible for domestic policy, civil service, public administration, elections, loca ...

, in

Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the Capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population ...

References

External links

Trial Watch: Frans Van Anraat
{{DEFAULTSORT:Anraat, Frans Van 20th-century Dutch criminals 21st-century Dutch criminals 1942 births Living people Dutch businesspeople People from Den Helder Dutch people convicted of war crimes Dutch people imprisoned abroad Prisoners and detainees of Italy Prisoners and detainees of the Netherlands Iraqi chemical weapons program Dutch expatriates in Iraq Iraq–Netherlands relations