Dutch want Saddam to testify
2006-10-23 17:33
Amsterdam - A Dutch court tried on Monday
to find out if Saddam Hussein and two associates can give
evidence in the appeals case of a Dutch businessman found guilty
of selling to Iraq chemicals used in gas attacks.
Frans van Anraat was sentenced to 15 years jail last year
after being found guilty of complicity in war crimes for
supplying raw materials to Iraq that were used to make poison
gas deployed in the 1980-1988 war with Iran.
The poison gas was also used against Iraq's own Kurdish
population, including an attack on the town of Halabja on March
16 1988 which killed an estimated 5 000 people.
Saddam is on trial in Baghdad for his role in the 1988
offensive in the northern Kurdistan region.
Examining judge
A verdict is
expected around November 5 in another case against him, relating to
killings in the Shi'ite village of Dujail in the early 1980s.
The appeals court in The Hague said in a statement it had
asked an examining judge to find out whether there was any
chance of Saddam and two other prominent members of his former
government being questioned as witnesses in the Dutch case.
The court also said it had asked the examining judge to
question a number of other witnesses - including two former
ambassadors to Baghdad, a UN human rights official and a
senior figure from Iraq's chemical weapons programme.
It said the examining judge had already determined that it
would not be possible to question five other witnesses.
In a magazine interview in 2003, Van Anraat admitted
supplying the chemicals, but denied knowing they were destined
for Iraq and that they would be used to make poison gas.
Prosecutors said he shipped chemicals from the United States
to Belgium and from Belgium to Iraq via Jordan.
He also shipped
chemicals from Japan to Italy, and then overland to Iraq.