Frans van Anraat

Frans Cornelis Adrianus van Anraat (born 9 August 1942) is a Dutch war criminal and a businessman. He sold raw materials for the production of chemical weapons to Iraq during the reign of Saddam Hussein. In December 2005, a court in The Hague convicted him of complicity in war crimes for his role in selling chemical weapons to Saddam's government. He was given a 15-year sentence. On appeal, Anraat's sentence was increased to 17 years, then reduced to 16.5 years. He was released from prison in 2015.

Business in Iraq In the 1970s, Van Anraat worked at engineering companies in Italy, Switzerland and Singapore that were building chemical plants in Iraq. Having learned about the trade in chemicals, he founded his own company, "FCA Contractor", based in Bissone, Switzerland. Starting in 1984, he supplied thousands of tons of chemicals to Iraq including the essential raw materials for producing mustard gas and nerve gas. Both gases were used during the Iran–Iraq War, between 1980 and 1988, as well as during the Halabja poison gas attack the military carried out on Iraqi Kurds, in 1988, which killed about 5,000 people and injured 10,000 more. The attack was part of the Al-Anfal campaign of the Iraqi regime against Kurds in the north of the country. He was wanted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in America for the illegal export of dangerous chemicals. Van Anraat was released pending extradition and fled to Iraq, where he lived for the next 14 years, was granted Iraqi nationality and given an Arabic name. In June 2007, the Dutch Supreme Court confirmed the sentence but reduced the imprisonment to 16 years and 6 months. The same year, an appellate court confirmed a ruling which required that Anraat pay €25,000 each to 16 plaintiffs in a civil suit against him.

Informant for the Dutch secret service Shortly after the arrest of Van Anraat, several Dutch newspapers reported that Van Anraat had been an informant for the Dutch secret service, the AIVD. According to the Dutch press, Van Anraat received protection from the AIVD and was placed in a safehouse of the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations, in Amsterdam.