The high court on Tuesday upheld the jail sentence imposed on businessman Frans van Anraat for his involvement in supplying chemicals to make mustard gas in Iraq.

The court found Van Anraat guilty of supplying large quantities of chemicals to Saddam Hussein’s regime in the 1980s which were then used to make chemical weapons.
He was found not guilty of genocide.
Van Anraat was originally sentenced to 15 years in jail in 2005. That sentence was increased to 17 years on appeal and has now been cut to 16.5 years.
The high court said Van Anraat traded out of the desire to make a profit and had ignored the effect of his actions. Nor had he ever showed any remorse, the court was quoted as saying by news agency ANP.
But the court refused to award damages to 16 claimants, saying it was too complicated, news agency AP reported.
Danya Mohammad, who was 11 when she survived Saddam’s March 1988 gas attack on the Kurdish city of Halabja, told AP she was disappointed by the court’s refusal to award damages. ‘But the most important thing is that he stays in prison,’ she said.