Sixteen victims of Saddam Hussein’s poison gas attacks on the Kurdish population in Northern Iraq and Iran in the 1980s are demanding compensation from Dutch businessman Frans van Anraat.

By Hermione Gee

The Dutchman provided the Iraqi government with the base material for mustard gas between 1984 and 1988. The Iraqi regime used the poison gas against Iranians and also against Iraqi Kurds in Halabja in 1988, where some 5,000 people were killed.

A Dutch court sentenced van Anraat in June to 16 years in prison for complicity in war crimes. He supplied Iraq with large amounts of thiodiglycol, an industrial material which can be used to produce mustard gas. The judge ruled that van Anraat was aware of the final purpose for the materials he supplied.

At that time, the victims also asked for compensation but their demand was rejected. They are now seeking €25,000 per person for emotional damages. More claims could follow, says their lawyer Liesbeth Zegveld.

Van Anraat was arrested in 1989 in Italy at the request of the US government, but fled to Iraq after his release and remained there until 2003. After the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, he returned to the Netherlands where he was arrested a year later.

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