In December 2005, a Dutch court found businessman Frans van Anraat guilty of complicity in war crimes. The court found that between 1984 -1988 van Anraat had brokered chemical precursors to the Iraqi regime from the US and Japan. The materials were then used to produce chemical weapons that were deployed against Kurdish civilians 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 his actions involved business transactions and that he did not sell chemical weapons to Iraq. He does does not appear to have broken any Dutch export laws in place at the time.

An important aspect of the case presented by the prosecution was the volume of chemical components provided by van Anraat over time. The overall volume of the chemicals provided, relative to other sources of the chemicals imported to Iraq during the time period in which the weapons were produced was important in showing the significance of the assistanc provided.

According to the prosecution, van Anraat was “suspected of delivering thousands of tons of raw materials for chemical weapons to the former regime in Baghdad between 1984 and 1988”. A 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 but which also has civilian uses.

The repeated transactions were the basis for inferring knowledge as to the end use of the chemicals. The chemicals are said to have been shipped via the Belgian port of Antwerp, through Aqaba in Jordan and overland to Iraq. United Nations weapons inspectors are reported to have identified van Anraat’s shipments as a key source for supplying Iraq with chemical agents.

The prosecution alleged that van Anraat was aware of the final purpose for the base materials he supplied, namely production of chemical weapons, and their likely use by the Iraqi regime. The court agreed, finding that van Anraat knew or should have known that the chemicals he supplied would be used in the production of chemical weapons. The court found that van Anraat’s deliveries facilitated the attacks and constituted a war crime. According to the presiding judge at trial, van Anraat “…cannot counter with the argument that this would have happened even without his contribution”.The fact of Iraqi use of chemical weapons throughout the period of his dealings with the regime was a basis upon which the court found van Anraat knew that Iraqi was using chemical weapons.

The prosecution charged van Anraat with both aiding and abetting war crimes as well as aiding and abetting genocide. The charges included;

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

The Court found 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. However, van Anraat was acquitted of the charge of genocide, as it could not be proven that he knew the genocidal intent of the regime.

Court convicted van Anraat for aiding and abetting war crimes and imposed a sentence of 15 years imprisonment (later set at 16.5 years; van Anraat was released in 2015).

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

In April 2017, Dutch businessman Guus Kouwenhoven was convicted on appeal on charges of illegal arms trafficking and complicity in war crimes during the civil war in Liberia. The court found that between 1999 to 2003, when Kouwenhoven controlled the main logging companies in Liberia, he used his business interests to provide support to the regime of Charles Taylor, the then president of Liberia. That support included the provision of weapons which a Dutch court found were were “used by Taylor in an armed conflict with rebels, in which defenseless civilians were the victims”.

Kouwenhoven, now in his eighties, denies the allegations and has actively defended himself in the Dutch courts. He fled to South Africa in 2016, where he remains.

The case was based on the defendant’s time as Director of Operations of the Oriental Timber Company (OTC) and of the Royal Timber Company (RTC) in Liberia, the biggest timber operations in Liberia. It was alleged that while serving in these positions van Kouwenhoven had close ties with Charles Taylor, himself later convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity by the Special Court for Sierra Leone.

The prosecution alleged that Kouwenhoven provided weapons to Taylor’s forces, who then committed war crimes during the Liberian civil war. In addition, Kouwenhoven’s companies sponsored militias that were accused of participating in the massacre of civilians. Specifically, Kouwenhoven, through his companies, was alleged to have provided weapons, vehicles, and installations to store the weapons, to militia who then used them in a number of massacres committed during the Liberian civil war. Kouwenhoven was “accused of having supplied the arms to the militias to enable them to carry out these crimes” (translation from Dutch).

In addition to aiding and abetting war crimes, Kouwenhoven was convicted of facilitating the import of arms for Taylor in contravention of UN Security Council resolutions. The United Nations Security Council had sanctioned Kouwenhoven (travel ban, asset freeze) in 2001, qualifying him as “an arms trafficker in breach of Resolution 1343 of the Security Council” in addition to being “someone who supported the efforts of ex-President Taylor in destabilizing Sierra Leone to gain illegal access to its diamonds”.

Kouwenhoven was arrested in the Netherlands on March 18, 2005. In June June 2006, a Dutch court acquitted van Kouwenhoven of the charges of war crimes. However, he was sentenced to an 8-year prison term, for having violated the UN arms embargo on Liberia. Both prosecution and defense appealed and on March 19, 2007, van Kouwenhoven was conditionally released pending his appeal. The appeal resulted in his acquittal in March 2008. This result was appealed and, after rulings on appeal and at the Dutch Supreme Court, Kouwenhoven was convicted in 2017 of aiding and abetting war crimes and arms trafficking and sentenced to 19 years. Kouwenhoven fled to South Africa in 2016.

In convicting him, the court held that Kouwenhoven’s provision of weapons entailed that he consciously accepted the probability that war crimes and/or crimes against humanity would be committed. The court accepted that Kouwenhoven does not seem to have acted so much out of political or ideological motive but out for profit and in order to maintain his income from the logging companies and his investments in Liberia.

The defendant was charged with the following offences:

Complicity in War Crimes: “The charges refer to a number of actions that have been penalized under the Criminal Law in Wartime Act (of the Netherlands) …(and )…articles 47 (complicity) and 57 of the Penal Code;”

Sanctions violations: Economic Offenses Act…articles 1, opening lines and under 2° (old), 1, opening lines and under 1°, 2 and 6 of the; articles 2 (old), 2, 3 (old), 3 and 13 of the Sanctions Act 1977;

Sanctions violations: Article 2 of the Liberian Sanctions Regulations 2001 of The Netherlands;

Sanctions violations: Article 2 of the Liberian Sanctions Regulations 2002 of the Netherlands;

Arms trafficking: ML1 and ML2 of the Schedule to the Import and Export Decree on Strategic Goods.
Status

Sources:

Guus Kouwenhoven, TRIAL International case summary

Guus K., alle ontwikkelingen, de Rechtspraak (Dutch courts), including all court documents and case history

More on this case soon.

Summary

Statement by defendant

Factual background

Legal proceedings and outcomes

Bruno Tesch invented Zyclon B that was used in the gas chambers of the Holocaust. After World War II, he was put on trial, convicted and executed.