The other Gas Man | The Gas Man Ep 4

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It's got mahogany walls, a marble lobby and a swimming pool. And back in the 90s, it's considered the height of Iraqi luxury.
Only the top tiers of society are seen here. And it's where lots of foreign journalists stay when they're in town.
Like Arnold Karskens. I was a war correspondent at that time in Iraq, when the war broke out.
I was staying in the very famous Rashid Hotel. Arnold Kaskins is in Iraq because Baghdad is under attack.
He's there chasing the story. And with its huge cellar, the Al Rashid Hotel is packed full of people trying to stay safe.
And during the bombardment, because Rashid had a huge stellar, I met a foreigner in the lobby. Most Westerners have already left the country.
And this foreigner in the lobby isn't a journalist. So Arnold Karskens notices him.
At that time, shortwave radios were forbidden in Iraq because Saddam Hussein didn't want people outside Iraq telling about his regime. And I saw him walking with a small radio and I went up to him and we chatted a little bit.
He was very pro-Saddam Hussein.

The man asked

for a favour. There are no phone

lines between Iraq and Europe

and he wants the journalist to pass a

message to his family so they know he's

OK. Arnold

Karskens agrees.

After five minutes, he walked

away.

It's a fleeting moment in the chaos, but something about it sticks with the journalist. So when he gets home, he calls the man's family as promised.
Job done. But Arnold Kaskins can't shake the feeling that there's more to this mysterious, well-connected foreigner.
So he starts trying to gather as much information about him as he can. He made this mistake by writing down this telephone number of his former wife in Switzerland.
I had to convince her, but then she talked little bit by little bit. Did she say what business he was doing? No, well, not exactly.
Only that he was doing business, that he was a businessman. The journalist can tell he's onto something, because he's not the only one looking for this guy.
Later on, I figured out that he was running away from the Americans because they wanted this arrest and expedition to the United States because of the export of chemicals.

And it was me that had to tell a U.S. custom that he was in Iraq.

Who does he call?

There was a Dutch reporter.

Special agent Dennis Bass.

I called him a couple of times and he was very busy with it as well.

The man Arnold Kaskins is interested in is on the run for buying hundreds of tonnes of thiodyglycol,

the mustard gas precursor from Alkalac,

the chemical company in Baltimore.

And Special Agent Bass has been after him for years.

Except he's not who you think he is.

This isn't Peter Valeschek.

The man in the hotel lobby is another gas man.

It was the same chemical, large quantities,

shippers on containers, falsified documents. Same thing, going to Iraq.
This other gas man has his own fascinating story. But the way that story was revealed to the world means he's ended up with a very different outcome to Peter Valaschek, because justice did eventually catch up with him.

And it was digging into this parallel case

that I discovered significant clues

about why that hasn't happened for Peter Valaschek.

I'm Chloe Hadjimathay from From Tortoise, this is The Gas Man.

Episode 4, The Other Gas Man.

What?

When I first came across the story of Peter Valaszczuk,

how he'd managed to get away with selling dangerous chemicals to Iran, I found it so compelling because it felt like I'd stumbled on something unique. I genuinely thought a case like his would be a one-off.
That's why finding out that another European man was buying the same chemical from the same US company at the same time and sending it to the other side in the same war was all the more startling. It was Special Agent Bass who first discovered this second trafficking network when he was going through that trawl of papers he seized from the chemical company in Baltimore.
We found a completely separate operation that was so similar in how things were done, it was really uncanny. And there was one name at the heart of it.
Franz van Anrat, the mysterious man in the hotel lobby. A Dutch national who'd already sent multiple large orders to Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq, a regime widely known to have been using chemical weapons for years.
So Dennis Bass started building a second case. And so we prepared an extradition request for Italy and knew that he travelled to Italy at times because of the residence and his wife was back and forth between Italy and Switzerland.
And so the Italians accepted it and arrested him. It was the chemical sales to Iraq that gave Franz van Anraat those houses in Italy and Switzerland.
Before that, he'd been languishing in middle management at a chemical company. He was a clever man, but he didn't have any formal qualifications.
What he did have was a gambling habit and expensive tastes. So when he got a call in the mid-80s from an Iraqi guy he knew, asking if he could help source some banned chemicals, he jumped at the chance.
He quit his job and started working for Saddam Hussein. And he was very good at it.
He got plenty of shipments through, no problem. So it's a shock when the Italians suddenly arrest him and he finds himself in prison.
But after After a few months, a judge rules against his extradition to the US and he's released. The Italian Supreme Court would later say that was a mistake and he should have been extradited, but it's too late.
Just like Peter Valestrzejk before him, Franz van Anraat walks away and vanishes was, like, devastated. It was difficult to get him.
It took a long time. And so, you know, what could I do? What I find so remarkable is that, given how exciting and complex the Valeschek and van Anrat cases are, it's boring administrative protocols that end up derailing both of them.
And eventually, Dennis Bass had to move on. He was busy with other customs investigations.
But both cases remained open, and both men were on Interpol's most wanted list. Wanted by FBI.
Illegal export of dangerous chemicals. Two of the profiteers of this illicit trade are international fugitives.
Peter Wallischek and Franz van Anrat. If you have any information, you should contact the nearest US embassy or consulate.
The US may pay a reward for information that leads to the arrest of these fugitives.

When the Dutch fugitive Franz van Anraat fled Italy,

he left Europe and his old life at home altogether and sought the protection of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

But Peter Valaschek, the original gas man, returned to Germany when he escaped.

And he spent the early 90s trying to carry on life and business as usual, except now he was a wanted man, known to Interpol. So every time he travelled, he was using multiple false identities.
I've seen a list of names he was using back then. Peter Loimi and some oddly English-sounding ones.

John Farmer, John Stuart Boardman.

And every time he leaves Germany, he takes a risk.

In 1994, that Interpol notice leads to him being arrested in Croatia

and put in prison for months. and then again in Austria in 2009.
But he keeps being released because of quibbles over extradition laws. I can only try and imagine Special Agent Bass's frustration.
Bureaucracy and human error always seem to be on the side of the fugitives. But this decades-long game of cat and mouse is infuriating for Peter Valaschek too.
All the arrests and the months he's spending sitting in prison are really getting to him. So he turns back to old habits.
He starts calling Dennis Bass, begging to be let off his charge. So would the phone just ring on your desk and you'd pick it up? Yeah, you know, they'd say there's a call for you and it would be him.
Yes, Agent Bass, this is Peter Walsh. I said, oh, OK.
You know, it's like, I said, what do you want? And he said, I would like to put this behind me.

I said, fine, come back and turn yourself in,

do your time, and it'll be behind you.

Well, I'm not doing that.

Can't we work something else out?

I said, what else is there to work out? I mean, that's it.

You told me everything you did,

so there's nothing I need to know from you.

You pled guilty.

We honored our part of the bargain. And so come back and do your time like a man.
And he said, well, I can't do that. I said, well, I'm not surprised, but fine.
Don't call me. Peter Valaszczuk is never totally safe.
Not from US law enforcement or from Special Agent Dennis Bass.

And I said to him, hey, look, this is how the rest of your life is going to be. You know, you're always going to have to look over your shoulder.
He's right. But Peter Valaszczuk is still free.
And other than Special Agent Dennis Bass, it seems like no one's really looking for him. Franz van Anra is in a different situation

because he's got someone else on his case. When Arnold Karskens, the Dutch journalist, realises that the man he bumped into in that hotel in Baghdad was Franz van Anrat, he makes it his mission to hunt him down.
The chemical dealer is still being sheltered by the Iraqi regime, but he might have met his match. Because Arnold Karskens will eventually specialise in tracking down war criminals.
He'll help put arms dealers and even Nazis behind bars. And Franz van Anrat will be his first target.
It takes many, many, many, many years to get them convicted. And journalism that don't stop after a month, but you know, for years and years and years, to get after the war criminal.
The Dutch journalist believes that Frans van Anraat is a war criminal. I went a couple of times to Iraq, tried to find him, but I could not because he was hiding somewhere.
I could not find out where he was staying. But Arnold Koskens isn't about to give up.
Because the chemicals Franz van Anra bought in Baltimore and sold to Saddam Hussein were dropped not just on the battlefield, but on villages and towns full of ordinary people. My name is Farkunde Shafi.
I go by Farah. People like Farah Shafi.
I am a Kurdish woman born in Sardasht. Sardasht is a small city in Iran on the border with Iraq.
When I ask Farah Shafi what it was like growing up there before the war, she gets quite emotional. Very green, mountainous, beautiful summer, spring, fall and winter, four seasons.
People know each other very well. you didn't have to give address to the cab driver.

Everybody knew everyone. In the 1980s, during the Iran-Iraq war, places like Sardash were right in

the firing line, not just because they were on the front lines, but because most people who lived

there were Kurdish. Saddam Hussein was convinced that the Kurds were plotting against him.
And so

Thank you. front lines, but because most people who lived there were Kurdish.
Saddam Hussein was convinced that the Kurds were plotting against him, and so he made a particular point of bombing them. Farah Shafi and her family spent most of the war scattered, staying with friends in safer parts of the country.
But by 1987, they were exhausted. Things seemed to be quietening down, and so they decided to brave it and go home.
We were there only one or two weeks, less than two weeks. My sister Farida hears that I have gone back to Sandash.
She says, I will go visit my sister. And she came.
The sisters haven't seen each other in years. They're excited to meet each other's youngest children for the first time.
Farah Shafi's 18-month-old son and her sister's one-year-old little girl. She was pink, cheeks, just like baby doll.
Honestly, just like a baby doll. And I looked at her.
She was so pretty. And I hugged her and I kissed her.
She was just so, so pretty. It's a normal, happy afternoon after years of war.
Just two sisters catching up and playing with the kids. Farah Shafi's in the kitchen making them all tea when she hears a noise outside.
I went to pour the water and right in front of me by the window I saw the planes and we all picked up the cats to go to the basement. Everybody is running to the same basement that we were heading to.
They hide and prepare for the sound of falling bombs, but instead there's an eerie silence. And then, one by one, they begin feeling sick.
Then I realised everybody started vomiting over each other even. We couldn't even make it to the one washroom that was there or the sink.
Those planes Farah Shafi had seen through the kitchen window weren't dropping bombs. They were spraying mustard gas, a chemical weapon made with thiodyglycol, the substance Franz van Anrat had sold to the Iraqis.
And me, my entire life, my worst nightmare was to see a scene like this. When the family realises what's happening, they panic and scatter.
She clutches her son Ramir and runs. I looked at Ramir.
Ramir doesn't cry. No noise, no nothing.
Pale. And just had a little bit of white stuff coming out of the mouth.
Somehow, Farah Shafi and her son make it to a hospital where they receive treatment and they begin to recover from their immediate symptoms. It's not until days later that she manages to find her sister.
And that was it when I saw them. Until I saw them again in hospital, my, and until I heard that Nahid was killed.

That tiny girl with the baby doll cheeks,

poisoned by the gas.

Even now, Farah Shafi blames herself.

If only she hadn't invited her sister over that day.

I have never forgiven myself. I have caused her to lose her daughter and her house.

And my niece passed away and my son stayed alive.

So that feeling of guilt, I have a feeling of guilt. And it's not just guilt that's plagued Farah Shafi in the years since that attack on her city.
I have stenosis and that's why I talk this way.

Tracheal stenosis, reactive airway disease, bronchitis.

Mustard gas gets into your cells and it can damage your DNA,

leaving you with long-term health problems.

Farah Shafi's lungs have hardened and her esophagus has narrowed.

Her son Ramir has the same condition.

They've both had operations and treatment for years

and still deal with pain on a daily basis.

Just weeks before our interview,

doctors told Farah Shafi they won't be able to operate on her again. I know I don't have a lot of years left.
I know that very well. The mustard gas Saddam Hussein dropped on Sardashht that day killed around 130 people.
Hundreds have since died from their injuries and thousands more live with devastating long-term health conditions. Less than a year after the mustard gas attack on Farah Shafi and her family in Sardasht, there was another chemical attack on the Kurdish town of Halabja.
This time, Iraqi forces used a combination of mustard gas and sarin. 5,000 people were killed and more than 10,000 injured.
It's the scale of these atrocities that I keep coming back to

when I think about Franz van Anrat.

A guy in a nice suit making business deals from behind a desk

and walking away as if that were the end of the story,

off to enjoy his life without a backward glance.

But Farah Shafi will never be free

from the consequences of Franz van Anrat's deals

And not just physically

She carries an unbearable burden of guilt for an event she had no control over

Guilt that, to my mind, rightly belongs to a man who had a hand in the making of that poisoned gas

What kind of person makes those choices without ever looking behind them? That's what I really wanted to know when I spoke to Arnold Kaskins. He spent years trying to understand Franz van Anra.
So I was looking for him all the time. I think he was always in my head.
Through interviews with sources and trips back to Baghdad, he slowly pieced together the life of luxury Frans van Anraak was living in Iraq during the 90s and how he became friends with Saddam Hussein. He was a womanizer, so he had girlfriends.
I had contact with them. And I went to Iraq a couple of times in the 90s, but I could not find him.

In the end, those womanising ways turned out to be quite useful for Arnold Karskens.

He hit the jackpot with Franz van Anrat's ex-wife, who was happy to dish the dirt.

She's with him when those terrible reports of the chemical attack in Halabja appear on TV.

She said he was very shocked because of the images.

They were all over the world, you know, people in Halabja lying on the streets.

Kids, cattle, everyone died.

And he was very shocked.

Shocked because he knows that the mustard gas used was probably made with his chemicals. Not that shocked, though.
It took him a couple of days, but then he said, OK, I prefer to buy first-class business class to all over the world and have this nice villa. That was for him, yeah, more interesting than saying, OK, I'll stop with this business and I go back to sort of poverty.
Yeah, he has no consonants in that way. If Frans van Anraat hesitates, it's not for long, because he continues delivering chemicals to Saddam Hussein after the attack on Halabja.
Franszor Anderlat was the type that you could say, well, on one hand, he was very friendly, he would like to play with kids and things like that. And then he would order 100 tons of theoretical, actually enough to murder thousands, thousands of people.
So he had two sides. One way he was a very nice guy, you could have a laugh and you had a drink with him.
But he didn't mind to order the most terrible stuff to murder people. Arnold Karskens wants to know if there are traits that run through these kinds of enablers.
He's learnt about Peter Valaschek from his conversations with Dennis Bass. And like me, he's fascinated with the parallel case to his investigation.
And so he decides to give Peter Valaschek a call. He wants to see what he has to continue sending the chemicals to Iraq.
Peter Valaszczuk, his German counterpart,

told me he saw the effects of chemical weapons in person,

that the Iranians took him to the battlefield to see the devastation.

They said, look, look where the dead people are.

Yes, I saw it.

The Iranians were dead, hundreds.

He says that happened after he fled the US. So, after he sent the chemical shipments.
But I can't quite square the dates. The war was over by that time.
It makes much more sense to me that the Iranians were taking him to the battlefield during the war to justify their need for chemicals. I've tried to check this with him, but he says he doesn't remember the details.
But having seen those bodies, he tells me in his office that if he'd known that thiodiglycol could be used to make mustard gas, he would have sold it to the Iranians anyway.

It reminds me of that Paul McCartney quote, if slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian.

What's extraordinary to me about Peter Valaschek and Franz van Anrat is that, in their own

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At this hour, American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger. By 2003, after years of tension, America and its allies are ready to invade Iraq.
They say they fear Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction. Iraq's no longer the safe haven Franz van Anrat relied on to evade the US authorities.
So he plans to leave. And here's where his story really starts to diverge from Peter Valaschek's.
Because each decision he makes from here on is going to take him further away from the impunity Peter Valaszczuk enjoys and closer to justice. In March, when the invasion begins, he smuggles himself out of Iraq in a car full of refugees driving to Syria.
And hops on a plane back to the Netherlands. And he's not worried about getting arrested because he's been cultivating a relationship with an organisation that's promised to protect him.
The Dutch Intelligence Service. they want to know whether Saddam Hussein actually has weapons of mass destruction, and who better to help answer that than the man who sold them to him in the first place.
Franz van Anra is a goldmine of information for intelligence officers. He was in a sort of safe house, so they could extract all the information they wanted.

He tells them all about Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons programme,

namely that there isn't one anymore.

Frans van Anra is so confident in the protection the intelligence services are providing him

that he agrees to an interview with one of the main Dutch news channels. I can't really understand why he agreed to the interview.
Maybe he had a taste for the spotlight. Perhaps he couldn't resist sharing his fascinating life experiences with the world.
But in the end, I think it was probably ego.

It'll turn out to be a huge mistake, one that will push him onto a different track from Peter Valaschek and take him from being a guy who got away with it to a guy who didn't. A round-faced man with a big mop of bright white hair and glasses hanging off a chain.
He has a slightly startled look, as if he hadn't imagined he'd be asked these kinds of questions. You're called a trader of death.
That must be painful to hear, the reporter says. Yes, of course it is, he replies, because it's not true.
The interviewer asks how he felt when he saw the images of the dead bodies in Kurdish cities like Sadasht and Halabja. Did he feel responsible? Yes Yes, Franz van Anrat says.
But, you know, that's just a feeling. I wasn't really responsible.
I still remember it as it were yesterday. I mean, how long is this ago? This is like some 20 years ago.
I've done so many cases in between. I still see him sitting in that screen.
Sitting on her sofa at home, watching all this on TV, is Lisbeth Zegfeld, a human rights lawyer. Well, he was so self-confident.
He was so like, I'm here in the Netherlands and these people are far away, and I'm a businessman, and I did what businessmen do. So, like, these are two completely distinct stories, and they do not touch each other, and they will never touch each other.
Watching it now, it reminds me of my conversation with Peter Valaszczuk. It's the same inability to accept responsibility.
When the reporter pushes him about his involvement, Franz van Anraat pushes back. Lots of people die in the world for all sorts of reasons, he answers.

You could hold hundreds of thousands of people responsible.

It wasn't my decision to launch chemical attacks.

Yes, I sold the chemicals, he says,

but I'm not connected to those deaths.

And I then immediately in my mind built the bridge from here to there

and say, we will connect you without any doubt.

We'll try to connect you.

And he opened the door for criminal prosecution because I was not the only one watching.

There was also the prosecutor watching.

I am Fred Thieven.

And I was a public prosecutor in the National Prosecution Department from 2003 till September 2006. All it took was that TV interview.
That's the reason we started to investigate this Mr Van Arndt. The television programme in the late days of October 2003 were the first moment we started with the investigation.

Fred Thieven, the public prosecutor,

and Lisbeth Zegfeld, the human rights lawyer, joined forces.

They want to get Franz van Anraat charged with war crimes and genocide.

Fred Thieven focuses on the physical evidence and Lisbeth Zegfeld on the victims. But first, they need to clear something up.
What have the intelligence services promised him? They promised him that there would be no prosecution, but they were not allowed to do so. There was a decision about the Minister of Justice in the spring of 2004 that there was no reason to give him a free ticket.
With his protection gone, they begin pulling the case together. Fred Thieven will have to prove a chain of evidence that links the specific thiodiglycol Franz van Anra ordered from Baltimore to the mustard gas canisters dropped on people like Farah Shafi in places like Sardasht and Halabja.
And they also travel to Baltimore to speak to Dennis Bass, who's retired by now, but who's very happy to dig through all his evidence files and share everything he has with them.

And of course, he's delighted that finally,

one of his cases might end in a trial.

And even happier when he realises that by escaping justice in the US,

Franz van Anrat has got himself into a whole load more trouble.

I thought that was great, because had I gotten him,

he would have probably gotten five years

and probably would have been out

in three, two and a half years.

So that was good.

I was happy to hear it.

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In 2005, a year after that TV interview, Franz van Anra finds himself sitting in a courtroom. Dennis Bass is there to give evidence, and so is Arnold Karskens.
He looked at me and was always a little responsible not only for war crimes, but for the genocide of the Kurds. One by one, Kurdish survivors of chemical attacks give their testimony.
And the whole time they're on the stand, he doesn't look at them, not even for a second. And when they spoke and I spoke, he looked at the top of his shoes.
So he had his head bowed to the floor and he wouldn't look at the people, neither me.

And that's how we remained throughout their stories.

To me, it seems like Frans van Anraak can't accept that his actions had consequences.

And those victims are the living proof. And that's why he can't look at them.
He never even takes the stand to give evidence. His lawyer speaks for him, arguing that he had no idea how the chemicals he was selling would be used, so he can't be held responsible for what happened to them.
But the judge doesn't buy it.

The prosecution proves that after 1984,

Franz van Anraat was the sole supplier of thiodyglycol to Iraq.

So all mustard gas attacks after that must have involved his chemicals.

So there was a conviction for the war crimes and the production of muster gas. It's not to genocide, it's war crimes.
They can't make the charge of genocide stick, but Franz van Anra is found guilty of complicity in committing war crimes. He's given a 15-year sentence, and when he appeals, it's increased to 17 years.

He also has to hand over more than a million euros he earned selling the chemicals to Iraq.

Watching from his retirement in the US, Dennis Bass is delighted.

Yeah, I felt great, great to hear that, you know, they charged them, they tried them, they convicted them, and they put them away. Lisbeth Zegfeld spent over a decade on the Franz van Anrak case.
So I wanted to ask her opinion on the Peter Wallischeck case. Peter Wallischeck, a German national, was buying from Alkalac the same chemical and selling to the Iranians.
Oh, selling to the Iranians? Yes. Wow, interesting.
And what kind of evidence is there in terms of causality? That's the thing. Something that's been playing on my mind ever since I found out about Franz van Anrat.
A crucial difference between the two men. There isn't any causal evidence in the Peter Valaszczuk case.
No chain of chemicals leading from Baltimore to dead bodies and suffering survivors. Peter Valaszczuk's chemical orders were placed in 1987 and 88.
He was caught fairly quickly, and so his supply to Iran ended. And within weeks, so did the war.
Iran has since admitted it was creating chemical weapons, and a US intelligence memo from the time mentions instances when Iran is said to have hit Iraqi forces with mustard gas on two occasions in October 1987. The timing means it is feasible that these attacks could have contained Peter Valaschek's chemicals, but there isn't enough evidence to prove that Iran was definitely responsible for these attacks, let alone to implicate Peter Valaschek.
We'll never be 100% sure. Two men take similar actions.
They sell dangerous chemicals to regimes involved in a war. But there's only proof that one man's actions end in death and suffering.
So, am I being unfair to Peter Válasík? Does that mean that in some way he's less guilty? Is there still a case to be made against him? Yeah, as a lawyer, I would say you need those victims in order... I mean, you know, I can try to hit you and kill you, but if I don't, then I haven't done it.
I mean, it's as simple as that. And so he may have violated export rules, which still, I mean, for that, it doesn't make any difference whether it's used or not.

You're not allowed to export it.

Are Franz van Anrat and Peter Valescek equally culpable?

Legally, no. One is guilty of an export violation.
The other of complicity to commit war crimes.

And so in a sense, it's luck that means that his chemicals did not end up causing more damage. Yeah, well, yeah, I think morally you have a point.
But I'm not sure a court of law is the only way to judge a man. There is this different standard, the moral one.
And here I'd argue that the danger of being a middleman is that you can't control what happens after you hand over the goods.

That's the risk you take when you break export rules

to sell something like thiodiglycol.

That sometime after the money hits your bank account,

the chemicals you're selling might end up corrupting the lungs of a child

somewhere halfway around the world.

Both men sold those chemicals anyway.

To me, it seems like Peter Valescek just got lucky.

We'll never know what might have happened

if the war had continued for a few more years and the Iranian regime had had the opportunity to use those chemicals. And I was starting to think it was plain old luck that had helped him evade justice, that maybe it was just one of those things, out of anyone's control, until a phone call changed my mind.
Franz van Anra was released in 2015 after spending 10 years behind bars. And in a weird twist of fate, the man who signed his application for early release was the very same man who worked so hard to get him convicted.
Fred Thieven, the public prosecutor, was now a politician. It's a little bit remarkable that I released van Amraat.
You signed his only release? Yes, as a state secretary for justice. I said, OK, you're now very old and you can go a few years earlier, you can go to your family.
And now Franz van Anraat has managed to vanish into the ether once again. I've heard he's no longer in the Netherlands, maybe in Switzerland or perhaps Italy.
I want to ask him about his side of the story, how he feels about his crimes now, after all those years in prison.

So I find a telephone number linked to his name and I give it a go.

There's no answer, but then suddenly someone calls me back.

Hello?

Yes, hello there, very good afternoon. You ring?

Yes, yes, hello, I'm trying to reach Franz van Anrat.

The person on the other end says he has nothing to do with that Franz van Anrat.

They just happen to have the same name.

And the call doesn't go well.

OK, no need to be so angry.

Why would you be that angry? That's such a weird reaction, don't you think? We have one more number to try, this time for Franz van Anrat's son. Yes? Hello, is that Michael van Anrat? It's the same person as before.
Hello, Mr Van Anrat.

It's Michael Van Anrat, the son.

That's who we were speaking with earlier on his father's number.

We explain what we're working on and ask whether he'd like to talk to us.

It's a hard no, but we do chat for a while before he ends the call.

I don't want to bother you. That's interesting.
He's very angry, clearly. And I guess it's had a massive impact on his life.
He grew up in Iraq as a result of this. There's no sense of responsibility.
There's no sense of the fact that somebody other than him and his father might have been victims in this whole affair. It's very much seen from his perspective.
And he knew about Peter Valaschuk? Oh, he knew exactly who Peter Valaschuk was. And I think that probably plays into his conspiracy theory.
Why did this guy get away with it, given that my father spent years in prison?

And given that Michael, the son, has probably been stigmatised by what his father's done. The fact that Peter Valericek is still free and has never done a sentence for his crimes must really just be salt in the wound for him.
Over the phone, Michael van Anrak claims

that it's not just Peter Valaschek who got away with it.

He tells us to look at other companies

and the governments backing them,

who he says did exactly what his father did,

helped create chemical weapons,

but have never had to pay compensation or sit in a prison cell watching their life pass by. What if Michael Van Amrat has a point? Could there be another bigger reason that Peter Valaschek has never been held to account? And if he got away with it once, what's to say he ever stopped? That's next time.
This is long-term suffering. And in the West, we tend to support those crimes from a distance, making money without having the blood on our own hands.
That's the cost of doing business. Who do you think paid for the fine? I bet you it didn't come out of Peter Walichek's bank account.
I bet you it came out of Iran's bank account. I have their many friends.
They were all from the heart. Like Hamas.
Like Hamas? Yeah. Thanks for listening to The Gas Man.
It's reported by Chloe Hadjimathayou and produced by me, Claudia Williams. It's written by both of us.
Gary Marshall is the narrative editor and Jasper Corbett is the editor. The sound design is by Hannah Varrell.
Original theme music by Tom Kinsella. We have thanks to Owen Mull, Dan Cazetta, Martin Hahn, Kavita Puri, Matt Russell and Katie Gunning.

You can listen to more episodes today by subscribing to Tortoise Plus or by downloading the Tortoise app.

You can listen to our previous investigations right here on Tortoise Investigates while you wait for the next episode.

And to hear more from our award-winning newsroom, search for Tortoise wherever you get your podcasts. Tortoise.
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