In December 2005, a Dutch court found businessman Frans van Anraat guilty of complicity in war crimes. The prosecution alleged that van Anraat, a Dutch citizen, had provided Saddam Hussein’s regime with chemical components which where used to make chemical weapons in the attacks on the Kurds in 1988, especially in Halabja, and against the Iranian town of Sardasht in 1987 and 1988. The Iraqi regime had used poison gases against Iranians in the Iran-Iraq war and, most infamously, during “Operation Anfal” in Iraqi Kurdistan between February and September 1988. Tens of thousands of civilians in Kurdistan were killed or maimed in the operation, including the 5000 massacred in Halabja in March that year.

Van Anraat had claimed in his own defense that he was conducting business and did not sell chemical weapons to Iraq. Indeed, he does not appear to have broken any Dutch export laws. However, a past sanctions investigation by U.S. customs authorities found van Anraat had been involved in four shipments to Iraq of thiodiglycol, an industrial chemical which can be used to make mustard gas. It also has civilian uses. The chemicals are said to have been shipped via the Belgian port of Antwerp, through Aqaba in Jordan to Iraq.

The prosecution alleged that van Anraat was aware of the final purpose for the base materials he supplied. According to the prosecution, van Anraat is “suspected of delivering thousands of tons of raw materials for chemical weapons to the former regime in Baghdad between 1984 and 1988”. United Nations weapons inspectors are reported to have said van Anraat was an important middleman supplying Iraq with chemical agents.

According to the presiding judge, van Anraat’s deliveries facilitated the attacks and constituted a war crime for which the Court imposed a sentence of 15 years imprisonment (later set at 16.5 years; van Anraat was released in 2015). As the judge stated: ‘He cannot counter with the argument that this would have happened even without his contribution’. The Court stated that the attacks against the Kurds had been carried out with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, the Kurdish population in Iraq, thus qualifying them as acts of genocide. Van Anraat however, was acquitted of the charge of genocide, as it could not be proven that he knew the genocidal intent of the regime.

The defendant was charged with violating the following international laws:

Article 1 Genocide Convention Implementation Act in conjunction with Article 48 (complicity) Penal Code (The Netherlands)

Article 8 Criminal Law in Wartime Act (The Netherlands) in conjunction with Article 48 Penal Code.

Stipulations of the Geneva Gas Protocol (1925)

Stipulations of Article 147 of the Geneva Convention on the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War (“Fourth Geneva Convention”, 1949)

Stipulations of the “common” Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949

Sources:

Conviction, December 2005 (LJN: AX6406, Rechtbank 's-Gravenhage , 09/751003-04 English translation)

Summary, Decision on Appeal, 2007, including links to court documents

Summary, Decision of Dutch Supreme Court, 2009 including links to decision

(more coming soon)

The contractor (of a mine cafeteria) acted as a go-between with the local AUC paras, and was sentenced for arranging the killing; there is a whole series of Truth and Rec processes involved in teh Drummand cases and the justiceinfo link below is a good summary

Sources: https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/drummond-lawsuit-re-paramilitary-killings-in-colombia-criminal-proceedings-in-colombia/

https://www.justiceinfo.net/en/133837-drummond-case-corporate-litmus-test-colombia-transitional-justice.html

(more coming soon)

Sources:

https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/blackwater-usa-lawsuit-re-16-sep-2007-baghdad-incident/