U.S. Decries Chlorine Gas in Bombs, Dutch Man Appeals Conviction for Supplying Chemicals to Iraq

Sunni extremists are using chlorine gas as weapons of “murder and intimidation” in Iraq, a senior U.S. Defense Department official said Friday (see GSN, March 29).

“I strongly believe this use of chlorine gas should not be dismissed merely as a new tactic or as a new trend,” Maj. Gen. Michael Barbero, a deputy operations director on the Joint Staff, said during a press conference.

Insurgents in recent weeks have employed tanks of chlorine gas in at least eight attacks, most recently on Wednesday in the city of Fallujah, the Associated Press reported.

“Chlorine is a poison gas,” Barbero said.   “It is a poison gas being used on the Iraqi people.  Before these attacks, the last time poison gas was used on the Iraqi people was by [former Iraqi President] Saddam Hussein” (see GSN, March 19).

The chlorine attacks, however, are different in scale from the attacks Hussein ordered that killed thousands.  The U.S. Marine Corps commander in Anbar province, heart of the Sunni insurgency, said Friday that incorporating chlorine gas into bombing attacks was largely an intimidation technique, AP reported.

“What you have to understand is that chlorine bombs have more of a psychological effect than they do as a killing effect,” Maj. Gen. W.E. Gaskin said, via teleconference.

Still, Barbero said the tactic is a troubling indication of an increasingly relentless insurgency.  “If they’ll resort to this, they’ll resort to anything,” he said (Robert Burns, Associated Press I/The Guardian, March 30).

Meanwhile, a Dutch court was scheduled today to hear the appeal from a businessman convicted in 2005 of selling chemicals to Hussein that the Iraqi dictator used against his country’s Kurdish population in the 1980s.

Dutch national Frans van Anraat, 64, received a 15-years sentence for selling tons of chemicals that were used to manufacture mustard and nerve agents that were used against villages in Northern Iraq.

He was convicted of “complicity in violating the rules of war” but avoided being linked to genocide.  The trial court ruled that he did not know the chemicals would be specifically deployed against the Kurds.

Van Anraat, however, contends that the he was unaware that the chemicals –— some of which came from the United States  —    had illegitimate purposes

Prosecutors are appealing the loss on genocide charges, contending van Anraat continued to sell chemicals to Iraq even after he learned of an attack on the Kurdish village of Halabja that killed 5,000 people.

The appeal case is expected to continue through April, and a verdict is likely in mid-May (Toby Sterling, Associated Press II/Kurdistan Regional Government, April 2).

Back to top
About Newswire  |  Contact National Journal  |  Re-Use Guidelines © Copyright 2008 by National Journal Group, Inc. The material in this section is produced independently for NTI by National Journal Group, Inc. Any reproduction or retransmission, in whole or in part, is a violation of federal law and is strictly prohibited without the consent of the National Journal Group, Inc. All rights reserved.