Saddam Nerve Gas Case Set to Start

Saddam nerve gas case set to start
By Paul Gallagher in Rotterdam
March 18, 2005

A DUTCH court opens hearings today against a man accused of helping former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein commit war crimes and genocide by providing him with materials for chemical weapons.

Frans van Anraat, 62, is charged with supplying thousands of tonnes of raw materials for chemical weapons used in the 1980-1988 war against Iran and against Iraqi Kurds, including a 1988 attack on the town of Halabja, in which an estimated 5000 people were killed.

Prosecutors say the United Nations has described Van Anraat, who is also charged with complicity in war crimes and genocide, as "one of the most important middlemen in Iraq's acquisition of chemical material".

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,12583496%255E1702,00.html

There's all the evidence the prosecution needs in the US National Security Archives. Not to mention in the 8,000 pages bush removed from Iraq's 12,000-page "WMD" report in 2003.

Or will the defense simply use the one UN report and the 7 US government reports that all conclude Iran "gassed the Kurds"?

And will the UK ever be held accountable for "gassing the Kurds"? Will the US ever be held accountable for supplying Iraq?

No, didn't think so.

American Seed Type Co. in Rockville,MD should be examined.

Correct me if I am wrong, but didn't the US supply the technical know how?? If so, will this be brought up in the trial??

...only the Iranians had at the time, is what killed the Kurds.

Iraq only had U.S. Supplied Mustard Gas, Which is a "Blister Agent."

<http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/31/opinion/31PELL.html?ex=1111294800&en=d690852d1e5fd6bd&ei=5070>

"...The accusation that Iraq has used chemical weapons against its citizens is a familiar part of the debate. The piece of hard evidence most frequently brought up concerns the gassing of Iraqi Kurds at the town of Halabja in March 1988, near the end of the eight-year Iran-Iraq war. President Bush himself has cited Iraq's "gassing its own people," specifically at Halabja, as a reason to topple Saddam Hussein

But the truth is, all we know for certain is that Kurds were bombarded with poison gas that day at Halabja. We cannot say with any certainty that Iraqi chemical weapons killed the Kurds. This is not the only distortion in the Halabja story.

I am in a position to know because, as the Central Intelligence Agency's senior political analyst on Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war, and as a professor at the Army War College from 1988 to 2000, I was privy to much of the classified material that flowed through Washington having to do with the Persian Gulf. In addition, I headed a 1991 Army investigation into how the Iraqis would fight a war against the United States; the classified version of the report went into great detail on the Halabja affair.

This much about the gassing at Halabja we undoubtedly know: it came about in the course of a battle between Iraqis and Iranians. Iraq used chemical weapons to try to kill Iranians who had seized the town, which is in northern Iraq not far from the Iranian border. The Kurdish civilians who died had the misfortune to be caught up in that exchange. But they were not Iraq's main target..."

(more at link)

<http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/31/opinion/31PELL.html?ex=1111294800&en=d690852d1e5fd6bd&ei=5070>

Iraq's never been known to have any blood agents.

But I'm sure the defense has all of these:

The US State Department found both sides were using chemical weapons.

"There are indications that Iran may also have used chemical artillery shells in this fighting," spokesman Charles Redman told the press a week after the attack. "We call on Iran and Iraq to desist immediately from the use of any chemical weapons."

On May 3, 1990, referring to yet another study, "A Defense Department reconstruction of the final stages of the Iran-Iraq war has assembled what analysts say is conclusive intelligence that one of the worst civilian massacres of the war, in the Iraqi Kurdish city of Halabja, was caused by "repeated chemical bombardments from both belligerent armies." "
Washington Post (May 3, 1990)
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0218,trilling,34389,1.html

The US government itself later confirmed the fact that both sides had used gas and that, in all likelihood, Iranian gas killed the Kurds.

A Pentagon report, ‘Iraqi Power and U.S. Security in the Middle East’ published in 1990 states (Chapter 5): “In March 1988, the Kurds at Halabjah were bombarded with chemical weapons, producing a great many deaths. Photographs of the Kurdish victims were widely disseminated in the international media. Iraq was blamed for the Halabjah attack, even though it was subsequently brought out that Iran too had used chemicals in this operation, and it seemed likely that it was the Iranian bombardment that had actually killed the Kurds.”
-United Nations: No Proof Saddam Gassed the Kurds
http://www.polyconomics.com/searchbase/11-18-98.html

The Pentagon's USAWC and US Marine Corps report concluded Iran gassed the Kurds at Halbjah, not Iraq.

Lessons Learned: The Iran-Iraq War
by Dr. Stephen Pelletiere and Lieutenant Colonel Douglas Johnson
U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies Institute

"The great majority of the victims seen by reporters and other
observers who attended the scene were blue in their extremities. That means that they were killed by a blood agent, probably either cyanogen chloride or hydrogen cyanide. Iraq never used and lacked any capacity to produce these chemicals. But the Iranians did deploy them. Therefore the Iranians killed the Kurds."

US Marine Corps document FMFRP 3

"Blood agents were allegedly responsible for the most infamous use of chemicals in the war—the killing of Kurds at Halabjah. Since the Iraqis have no history of using these two agents—and the Iranians do—we conclude that the Iranians perpetrated this attack."
http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/ops/war/docs/3203/

The DIA's report concluded Iran had gassed the Kurds & Iranians of Halabjah;

Immediately after the battle the United States Defense Intelligence Agency investigated and produced a classified report, which it circulated within the intelligence community on a need-to-know basis. That study asserted that it was Iranian gas that killed the Kurds, not Iraqi gas.

The agency did find that each side used gas against the other in the battle around Halabja. The condition of the dead Kurds' bodies, however, indicated they had been killed with a blood agent - that is, a cyanide-based gas -which Iran was known to use. The Iraqis, who are thought to have used mustard gas in the battle, are not known to have possessed blood agents at the time.

http://truthout.org/docs_02/020303C.htm

The CIA's report mentions "hundreds" killed, not "5000" and against the Iranians primarily w Kurds caught in the cross-fire. This report is still on the US government CIA website.

http://www.cia.gov/cia/reports/iraq_wmd/Iraq_Oct_2002.htm

Lawyer: Saddam not involved in gassing of Kurds
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1105845488605