Iraq - Dutch chemicals merchant convicted of war crimes

File this with the who armed Saddam list. Hint, it wasn't America.

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) -- A court convicted a Dutch chemicals merchant of war crimes Friday, sentencing him to 15 years in prison for selling Saddam Hussein's regime the materials used in lethal gas attacks on Kurdish villages in the 1980s.

Frans Van Anraat, 63, was not in the courtroom as the judges issued the verdict in the first court case anywhere concerning the killing of thousands of Iraqi Kurds with chemical weapons.

The court first determined that the slaughter of the Kurds constituted genocide -- a finding that may reverberate in later charges against Saddam by an Iraqi court in Baghdad -- and that the chemicals supplied by the businessman were essential to the making of the weapons.

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