On November 21, 2005, the trial of Frans van Anraat, a Dutch businessman accused of supplying chemical agents to Iraq with the knowledge that Saddam Hussein would use them for poison gas attacks, began in the Netherlands. He was charged with complicity in war crimes and genocide and is alleged to have supplied agents used by Saddam's military in the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war and against the Iraqi Kurdish population, specifically during the 1988 attack on Halabja, which killed around 5,000 people. Van Anraat was later convicted and sentenced to 15 years in prison.

Dutch coat of arms

Learn more about Frans van Anraat from the JURIST news archive.

Also on This Day at Law:


Women's rights activists founded NOW
Dayton Accords ended war in Bosnia