THE HAGUE, Dec 20 (AFP) - A Dutchman suspected of helping the regime of Saddam Hussein make chemical weapons and charged with complicity in genocide has links with the Dutch intelligence services, Dutch media reported on Monday.
Citing anonymous sources, the Volkskrant newspaper said that businessman Frans van Anraat, who allegedly helped former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein commit war crimes and genocide by supplying him with the materials to make chemical weapons, was an informant of the Dutch intelligence services AIVD.
Dutch media reported Friday that Van Anraat, who was arrested in early December, lived in an interior ministry safe house normally used to lodge people needing government protection.
The interior ministry would not comment on the reports, saying that information on safe houses should remain confidential for operational reasons.
Van Anraat is suspected of supplying materials needed to produce the mustard gas that was used in the notorious 1988 attack on the Kurdish town of Halabja, near Iraq's border with Iran.
In July officials of the Iraqi Special Tribunal set up to try Saddam said Van Anraat faces seven charges of crimes against humanity. One charge specifically relates to the gas attack in Halabja during Iraq's bloody war against Iran.
A spokesman for the national prosecutor's office that is in charge of the investigation would not comment on the alleged links between the suspect and the intelligence services.
"To us it does not matter with whom he had contacts or where he was staying as long as we knew where he was," spokesman Wim de Bruin said Monday.
Van Anraat was remanded in custody by a court in The Hague on Friday.
12/20/2004 15:40 GMT - AFP