The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg has confirmed the conviction in the Netherlands of Dutch businessman Frans van Anraat.

In June last year the Dutch Supreme Court confirmed his conviction for complicity in war crimes, although it did reduce his sentence from 17 years to 16½.

Between 1984 and 1988 Van Anraat delivered over 1,100 tonnes of chemicals from which mustard gas can be manufactured to the then dictatorship of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

After 1984 he was the sole supplier of these chemicals.

Mustard gas is known to have been used by the Iraqi military against Iranian armed forces and civilians during the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988) and in attacks against the Kurdish population of northern Iraq.

Baghdad used poison gas against the Kurds in northern Iraq and during the war with Iran (1980-88), in violation of the 1925 Geneva Convention. One such attack, carried out on the town of Halabja in March 1988, killed thousands of civilians and injured thousands more.

Van Anraat was convicted by the Netherlands Court of Appeal of being an accessory to war crimes. He claimed his conviction was unjust and he could not be tried for complicity with Saddam Hussein since the Iraqi president enjoyed diplomatic immunity during the period in question and was outside the jurisdiction of the Netherlands.

The court in Strasbourg rejected this argument and ruled he had been correctly convicted.