The other Gas Man | The Gas Man Ep 4

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Speaker 14 Tortoise.

Speaker 15 The Al Rashid Hotel is just a short walk from the banks of the River Tigris in central Baghdad. It's got mahogany walls, a marble lobby and a swimming pool.

Speaker 15 And back in the 90s, it's considered the height of Iraqi luxury. Only the top tiers of society are seen here.

Speaker 15 And it's where lots of foreign journalists stay when they're in town, like Arnold Caskins.

Speaker 16 I was a war correspondent at a time in Iraq when the war broke out. I was staying in a very famous Rashid Hotel.

Speaker 15 Arnold Kaskins is in Iraq because Baghdad is under attack. He's there chasing the story.

Speaker 15 And with its huge cellar, the Al-Rashid Hotel is packed full of people trying to stay safe.

Speaker 16 And during the bombardment, because Rashid had a huge cellar, I met

Speaker 17 a foreigner in the lobby.

Speaker 15 Most Westerners have already left the country. And this foreigner in the lobby isn't a journalist, so Arnold Kaskins notices him.

Speaker 16 At that time short wave radios were forbidden in Iraq because Saddam Hussein didn't want people outside Iraq telling about his regime. And I saw him walking with

Speaker 16 a small radio and I went up to him and we chat a little bit. He was very pro-Saddam Hussein.

Speaker 15 The man asked for a favor.

Speaker 15 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 okay.

Speaker 15 Arnold Caskins agrees.

Speaker 16 And after five minutes he walked away.

Speaker 15 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.

Speaker 15 But Arnold Coskins can't shake the feeling that there's more to this mysterious, well-connected foreigner.

Speaker 16 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 in switzerland as to convince her but then she talked little bit by little bit did she say what business he was doing no well not not exactly

Speaker 16 only that he was doing business that he was a businessman

Speaker 15 The journalist can tell he's onto something because he's not the only one looking for this guy.

Speaker 16 Later on, I figured out that he was running away from the Americans because they wanted this arrest and exhibition to the United States because of the export of chemicals.

Speaker 16 And it was me that had to tell

Speaker 16 U.S. customs that he was in Iraq.

Speaker 15 Who does he call?

Speaker 18 There was a Dutch reporter,

Speaker 15 special agent Dennis Bass.

Speaker 16 I called him a couple of times, and he was very

Speaker 16 busy with it as well.

Speaker 15 The man Arnold Caskins is interested in is on the run for buying hundreds of tons of thiodiglycol, the mustard gas precursor from Alcalac, the chemical company in Baltimore.

Speaker 15 And Special Agent Bus has been after him for years.

Speaker 15 Except he's not who you think he is.

Speaker 15 This isn't Peter Valaschek.

Speaker 15 The man in the hotel lobby is another gas man.

Speaker 18 It was the same chemical, large quantities, shippers-owned containers, falsified documents. Same thing, going to Iraq.

Speaker 15 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.

Speaker 15 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 Valischek.

Speaker 15 I'm Chloe Hajimathayu from Tortoise.

Speaker 15 This is The Gas Man,

Speaker 15 episode 4: The Other Gasman.

Speaker 15 When I first came across the story of Peter Valisek, 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.

Speaker 15 I genuinely thought a case like his would be a one-off.

Speaker 15 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.

Speaker 15 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.

Speaker 18 We found a completely separate operation that was so similar in how things were done,

Speaker 18 it was really uncanny.

Speaker 15 And there was one name at the heart of it,

Speaker 15 Franz van Anrat,

Speaker 15 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 using chemical weapons for years.

Speaker 15 So Dennis Bas started building a second case.

Speaker 18 And so we prepared an extradition request for Italy and knew that he traveled to Italy at times because of the residence and his wife was back and forth between Italy and Switzerland.

Speaker 18 And so the Italians accepted it and arrested him.

Speaker 15 It was the chemical sales to Iraq that gave Franz van Anrat those houses in Italy and Switzerland. Before that, he'd been languishing in middle management at a chemical company.

Speaker 15 He was a clever man, but he didn't have any formal qualifications. What he did have was a gambling habit and expensive tastes.

Speaker 15 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.

Speaker 15 And he was very good at it. He got plenty of shipments through, no problem.

Speaker 15 So it's a shock when the Italians suddenly arrest him and he finds himself in prison.

Speaker 15 But after a few months, a judge rules against his extradition to the US and he's released.

Speaker 15 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 Valisczek before him, Franz van Anrat walks away and vanishes.

Speaker 18 Oh, I was like devastated. It was difficult to get him.
It took a long time. And so,

Speaker 5 you know, what could I do?

Speaker 15 What I find so remarkable is that Given how exciting and complex the Valiscick and Van Anrat cases are, it's boring administrative protocols that end up derailing both of them.

Speaker 15 And eventually, Dennis Bass had to move on. He was busy with other customs investigations.

Speaker 15 But both cases remained open, and both men were on Interpol's most wanted list.

Speaker 19 Wanted by FBI, illegal export of dangerous chemicals. Two of the profiteers of this illicit trade are international fugitives, Peter Valischek and Franz van Anrat.

Speaker 19 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.

Speaker 15 When the Dutch fugitive Franz van Anrat fled Italy, he left Europe and his old life at home altogether and sought the protection of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

Speaker 15 But Peter Walisczek, the original gas man, returned to Germany when he escaped.

Speaker 15 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.

Speaker 15 So every time he travelled, he was using multiple false identities.

Speaker 15 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.

Speaker 15 And every time he leaves Germany, he takes a risk.

Speaker 15 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.

Speaker 15 I can only try and imagine Special Agent Bass's frustration. Bureaucracy and human error always seem to be on the side side of the fugitives.

Speaker 15 But this decades-long game of cat and mouse is infuriating for Peter Walaschek too.

Speaker 15 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,

Speaker 15 begging to be let off his charge.

Speaker 15 So would the phone just ring on your desk and he'd pick it up?

Speaker 18 Yeah, you know, they'd say there's a call for you and it would be him. Yes, Agent Vest, this is Peter Walescheck.

Speaker 18 I said, oh, okay. You know, it's like, so I said, what do you want?

Speaker 18 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?

Speaker 18 I said, what else is there to work out? I mean, that's it.

Speaker 18 You told me everything you did, so there's nothing I need to know from you. You played guilty.
we honored our part of the bargain, and so come back and do your time like a man.

Speaker 18 And he said, well, I can't do that. I said, well, I'm not surprised, but fine.

Speaker 5 Don't call me.

Speaker 15 Peter Valisek is never totally safe. Not from U.S.
law enforcement or from Special Agent Dennis Bass.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 15 He's right. but Peter Walaschek is still free.

Speaker 15 And other than special agent Dennis Bass, it seems like no one's really looking for him.

Speaker 15 Franz van Anrat is in a different situation because he's got someone else on his case.

Speaker 15 When Arnold Carskins, 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.

Speaker 15 The chemical dealer is still being sheltered by the Iraqi regime, but he might have met his match.

Speaker 15 Because Arnold Carskins will eventually specialize 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.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 15 The Dutch journalist believes that Franz van Anrat is a war criminal.

Speaker 16 I went a couple of times to Iraq, tried to find him, but I could not because he was hiding somewhere.

Speaker 6 I could not find out where he was staying.

Speaker 15 But Arnold Carskin's isn't about to give up because the chemicals Franz van Anrat bought in Baltimore and sold to Saddam Hussein were dropped not just on the battlefield, but on villages and towns full of ordinary people.

Speaker 20 My name is Farkonde Shafi. I go by Farah.

Speaker 15 People like Farah Shafi.

Speaker 20 I am a Kurdish woman born in Sardasht.

Speaker 15 Sardasht is a small city in Iran on the border with Iraq.

Speaker 15 When I ask Farah Shafi what it was like growing up there before the war, she gets quite emotional.

Speaker 20 Very green, mountainous,

Speaker 20 beautiful summer, spring, falls and winter four seasons.

Speaker 20 People know each other very well.

Speaker 20 You didn't have to give address to the cab driver.

Speaker 5 Everybody knew everyone.

Speaker 15 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.

Speaker 15 Saddam Hussein was convinced that the Kurds were plotting against him, and so he made a particular point of bombing them.

Speaker 15 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.

Speaker 15 Things seemed to be quietening down, and so they decided to brave it and go home.

Speaker 20 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.

Speaker 15 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.

Speaker 20 She was pink cheeks, just like a 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.

Speaker 15 It's a normal, happy afternoon after years of war. Just two sisters catching up and playing with the kids.

Speaker 15 Ferrisafi's in the kitchen making them all tea. when she hears a noise outside.

Speaker 20 I went to pour the water and right in front of me by the window I saw the flames.

Speaker 20 And we all picked up the the cats to go to the basement. Everybody is running to the same basement that we were heading to.

Speaker 15 They hide and prepare for the sound of falling bombs but instead there's an eerie silence

Speaker 15 and then one by one they begin feeling sick.

Speaker 20 Then I realize everybody started vomiting

Speaker 20 over each other, even. We couldn't even make it to the one washroom that was there or the sink.

Speaker 15 Those planes Ferro Shafi had seen through the kitchen window weren't dropping bombs.

Speaker 15 They were spraying mustard gas, a chemical weapon made with thiodiglycol, the substance Franz van Anrap had sold to the Iraqis.

Speaker 20 And me, my entire life,

Speaker 20 my worst nightmare was to see a scene like this.

Speaker 15 When the family realizes what's happening, they panic and scatter.

Speaker 15 She clutches her son Ramir and runs.

Speaker 20 I looked at Ramir. Ramir doesn't cry.

Speaker 20 No noise, no nothing.

Speaker 20 Pale. And just had a little bit of white stuff coming out of the mouth.

Speaker 15 Somehow, Farah Shafi and her son make it to a hospital where they receive treatment and they begin to recover from their immediate symptoms.

Speaker 15 It's not until days later that she manages to find her sister.

Speaker 20 And that was it when I saw them.

Speaker 20 Until I saw them again in hospital, my sister, and until I heard that Nahid was killed.

Speaker 15 That tiny girl with the baby doll cheeks, poisoned by the gas.

Speaker 15 Even now, Ferris Shafi blames herself. If only she hadn't invited her sister over that day.

Speaker 20 I have never forgiven myself.

Speaker 5 I have caused her

Speaker 5 to lose

Speaker 5 her daughter and her house.

Speaker 20 And my niece passed away, and my son

Speaker 5 stayed alive.

Speaker 20 So that feeling of

Speaker 20 guilt,

Speaker 5 I have a feeling of guilt.

Speaker 15 And it's not just guilt that's plagued Farah Shafi in the years since that attack on her city.

Speaker 20 I have stenosis, and that's why I talk this way.

Speaker 20 Tracheal stenosis,

Speaker 20 reactive airway disease, bronchitis.

Speaker 15 Mustard gas gets into your cells and it can damage your DNA, leaving you with long-term health problems. Pneumonia.
Ferra Shafi's lungs have hardened and her esophagus has narrowed.

Speaker 15 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.

Speaker 15 Just weeks before our interview, doctors told Farah Shafi they won't be able to operate on her again.

Speaker 5 I know I don't have a lot of

Speaker 5 years left.

Speaker 5 I know that very well.

Speaker 15 The mustard gas Saddam Hussein dropped on Sardasht that day killed around 130 people.

Speaker 15 Hundreds have since died from their injuries and thousands more live with devastating long-term health conditions.

Speaker 15 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.

Speaker 15 This time, Iraqi forces used a combination of mustard gas and sarin.

Speaker 15 5,000 people were killed and more than 10,000 injured.

Speaker 15 It's the scale of these atrocities that I keep coming back to when I think about Franz van Anrat.

Speaker 15 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.

Speaker 15 But Farah Shafi will never be free from the consequences of Franz van Anrat's deals.

Speaker 15 And not just physically. She carries an unbearable burden of guilt for an event she had no control over.

Speaker 15 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?

Speaker 15 That's what I really wanted to know when I spoke to Arnold Carskins. He spent years trying to understand Franz van Anra.

Speaker 16 So I was looking for him all the time.

Speaker 16 I think he was always in my head.

Speaker 15 Through interviews with sources and trips back to Baghdad, he slowly pieced together the life of luxury Franz van Anrat was living in Iraq during the 90s and how he became friends with Saddam Hussein.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 15 In the end, those womanizing ways turned out to be quite useful for Arnold Caskins. He hit the jackpot with Franz van Anrat's ex-wife, who was happy to dish the dirt.

Speaker 15 She's with him when those terrible reports of the chemical attack in Halabja appear on TV.

Speaker 16 She said that he was very shocked because of the images all over the world. You know, the people

Speaker 16 in Halabja was lying on the streets, kids, everywhere,

Speaker 16 cattle, everywhere, died.

Speaker 16 And

Speaker 16 he was very shocked.

Speaker 15 Shocked because he knows that the mustard gas used was probably made with his chemicals. Not that shocked, though.

Speaker 16 It took him a couple of days, but then he said, Okay, I prefer to try first-class business class to all over the world and have this nice feeler.

Speaker 16 That was for him, yeah, more interesting than saying, Okay, I stop with this business and

Speaker 16 I go back to sort of poverty. Yeah, yeah, that's he has no confidence in that way.

Speaker 15 If Franz van Anrat hesitates, it's not for long, because he continues delivering chemicals to Saddam Hussein after the attack on Halabja.

Speaker 16 Franz van ANRAT 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 teodical,

Speaker 16 actually enough to murder thousands, thousands of people so he had two sides one where he was a very nice guy you could have a laugh and you had a drink with him and and then but he didn't mind to

Speaker 16 order the most terrible stuff to uh to murder people

Speaker 15 arnold caskins wants to know if there are traits that run through these kinds of enablers He's learned about Peter Valisek from his conversations with Dennis Bass.

Speaker 15 And like me, he's fascinated with the parallel case to his investigation. And so he decides to give Peter Valischek a call.
He wants to see what he has to say for himself.

Speaker 16 It was the same.

Speaker 16 A nice guy, you could call him. And I think he wanted to talk more than Franz van Armerand.

Speaker 16 But one way or the other, they always have an excuse what they did.

Speaker 16 They sleep well as well.

Speaker 16 Because

Speaker 16 they had this switch on, switch off concerning human rights and what you should do in your life and how you should behave

Speaker 16 towards other people.

Speaker 15 Franz van Anrat sees the effects of mustard gas on TV and he decides to continue sending the chemicals to Iraq.

Speaker 15 Peter Falicek, his German counterpart, told me he saw the effects of chemical weapons in person, that the Iranians took him to the battlefield to to see the devastation.

Speaker 13 They said, look, look where the dead people are.

Speaker 20 Yes, I saw it.

Speaker 22 The Iranians were dead.

Speaker 20 Hundreds.

Speaker 15 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.

Speaker 15 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.

Speaker 15 I've tried to check this with him, but he says he doesn't remember the details.

Speaker 15 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.

Speaker 15 It reminds me of that Paul McCartney quote, if slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian.

Speaker 15 What's extraordinary to me about Peter Valiszek and Franz van Anrat is that, in their own ways, they appear to have seen through the glass walls

Speaker 15 and they were still willing to sign the contract.

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Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 15 On my orders.

Speaker 15 By 2003, after years of tension, America and and its allies are ready to invade Iraq. They say they fear Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction.

Speaker 15 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 Valiscick's.

Speaker 15 Because Each decision he makes from here on is going to take him further away from the impunity Peter Valischek enjoys and closer to justice.

Speaker 15 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.

Speaker 15 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.

Speaker 15 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.

Speaker 15 Franz van Anra is a goldmine of information for intelligence officers.

Speaker 16 He was in a sort of safe house so they could extract all the information they wanted.

Speaker 15 He tells them all about Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons program, namely that there isn't one anymore.

Speaker 15 Franz van Anrat 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.

Speaker 15 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.

Speaker 15 But in the end, I think it was probably ego.

Speaker 15 It'll turn out to be a huge mistake, one that will push him onto a different track from Peter Valischek and take him from being a guy who got away with it to a guy who didn't.

Speaker 15 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.

Speaker 15 You're called a trader of death. That must be painful to hear, the reporter says.

Speaker 15 Yes, of course it is, he replies, because it's not true.

Speaker 15 The interviewer asks asks how he felt when he saw the images of the dead bodies in Kurdish cities like Sardasht and Halabja. Did he feel responsible?

Speaker 15 Yes, Franz van Anrat says, but you know, that's just a feeling. I wasn't really responsible.

Speaker 24 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.

Speaker 16 I still see him sitting in that screen.

Speaker 15 Sitting on her sofa at home, watching all this on TV, is Lisbeth Seckfeld, a human rights lawyer.

Speaker 24 And I'm a businessman, and I do, and I did what businessmen do.

Speaker 24 Talk like these are two completely distinct stories, and they do not touch each other and they will never touch each other.

Speaker 15 Watching it now, it reminds me of my conversation with Peter Valisczek. It's the same inability to accept responsibility.

Speaker 15 When the reporter pushes him about his involvement, Franz van Anrap pushes back.

Speaker 15 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.

Speaker 15 Yes, I sold the chemicals, he says, but I'm not connected to those deaths.

Speaker 24 And I then immediately in my mind built the bridge from here to there and say,

Speaker 24 we will connect you without any doubt. We'll try to connect you.

Speaker 24 And he opened the door for criminal prosecution because I was not the only one watching. There was also the prosecutor watching.

Speaker 21 I am Fred Teven,

Speaker 21 and I was a public prosecutor in the National Prosecution Department from 2003 till September 2006.

Speaker 15 All it took was that TV interview.

Speaker 21 That's the reason we started to investigate this Mr. Van Unrout.
The television program in the late days of October 2003 were the first moment we started with the investigation.

Speaker 15 Fred Teven, the public prosecutor, and Lisbeth Zegfeld, the human rights lawyer, joined forces.

Speaker 15 They want to get Franz van Anrat charged with war crimes and genocide.

Speaker 15 Fred Teeven 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?

Speaker 21 Yeah, they promised him that there

Speaker 21 would be no prosecution, but they were not allowed to do so, though. 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.

Speaker 15 With his protection gone, they begin pulling the case together.

Speaker 15 Fred Teven 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.

Speaker 15 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.

Speaker 15 And of course, he's delighted that finally, one of his cases might end in a trial.

Speaker 15 And even happier when he realises that by escaping justice in the U.S., Franz Van Anrat has got himself into a whole load more trouble.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 So that was good. I was happy to hear it.

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Speaker 15 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 Carskins.

Speaker 16 He looked at me and was always a little bit nasty looking at me, and I understood. But actually, he was to blame himself.

Speaker 16 He wanted to talk too much, thought, well, nobody can harm me, and put his head in

Speaker 16 the rope himself.

Speaker 15 The prosecution argues that Franz van Anra is responsible not only for war crimes, but for the genocide of the Kurds.

Speaker 15 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.

Speaker 24 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 neither at me, and

Speaker 24 that's how he remains throughout their

Speaker 24 stories.

Speaker 15 To me, it seems like Franz van Anrach 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.

Speaker 15 He never even takes the stand to give evidence.

Speaker 15 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.

Speaker 15 The prosecution proves that after 1984, Franz van Anrat was the sole supplier of thiodiglycol to Iraq. So all mustard gas attacks after that must have involved his chemicals.

Speaker 21 So there was a conviction for the war crimes. and the production of mustard gas.
It's not to genocide, it's war crimes.

Speaker 15 They can't make the charge of genocide stick, but Franz van Anra is found guilty of complicity in committing war crimes.

Speaker 15 He's given a 15-year sentence, and when he appeals, it's increased to 17 years.

Speaker 15 He also has to hand over more than a million Euros he earned selling the chemicals to Iraq.

Speaker 15 Watching from his retirement in the US, Dennis Bass is delighted.

Speaker 18 Yeah, I felt great. Great to hear that, you know, they charged him, they tried him, they convicted him, and they put him away.

Speaker 15 Lisbeth Zegfeld spent over a decade on the Franz van Anrach case. So I wanted to ask her opinion on the Peter Walisczek case.

Speaker 15 Peter Walisczyk, a German national, was buying from Alkalak the same chemical and selling to the Iranians.

Speaker 24 Oh, selling selling to the Iranians?

Speaker 15 Yes.

Speaker 11 Wow.

Speaker 24 Interesting. And what kind of evidence is there in terms of causality?

Speaker 15 That's the thing.

Speaker 15 Something that's been playing on my mind ever since I found out about Franz van Anrat.

Speaker 15 A crucial difference between the two men. There isn't any causal evidence in the Peter Valischek case.

Speaker 15 No chain of chemicals leading from Baltimore to dead bodies and suffering survivors.

Speaker 15 Peter Valischek's chemical orders were placed in 1987 and 88.

Speaker 15 He was caught fairly quickly, and so his supply to Iran ended. And within weeks,

Speaker 15 so did the war.

Speaker 15 Iran has since admitted it was creating chemical weapons.

Speaker 15 And a US intelligence memo from the time mentions instances when Iran is said to have have hit Iraqi forces with mustard gas on two occasions in October 1987.

Speaker 15 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.

Speaker 15 We'll never be 100%

Speaker 15 sure.

Speaker 15 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.

Speaker 15 So, am I being unfair to Peter Valischek? Does that mean that in some way he's less guilty?

Speaker 15 Is there still a case to be made against him?

Speaker 24 Yeah, as a lawyer, I would say you need those victims in order to... 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.

Speaker 24 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.

Speaker 15 Are Franz van Anrat and Peter Walisczek equally culpable?

Speaker 15 Legally? No.

Speaker 15 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.

Speaker 24 Yeah, well, yeah, I think morally you have a point.

Speaker 15 But I'm not sure a court of law is the only way to judge a man.

Speaker 15 There is this different standard, the moral one.

Speaker 15 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.

Speaker 15 That's the risk you take when you break export rules to sell something like thiodiglycol.

Speaker 15 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.

Speaker 15 Both men sold those chemicals anyway.

Speaker 15 To me, it seems like Peter Valisek just got lucky.

Speaker 15 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.

Speaker 15 And I was starting to think it was plain old luck that had helped him evade justice. But maybe it was just one of those things out of anyone's control.
Until a phone call changed my mind.

Speaker 15 Franz van Anra was released in 2015 after spending 10 years behind bars.

Speaker 15 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.

Speaker 15 Fred Teven, the public prosecutor, was now a politician.

Speaker 21 It's a little bit

Speaker 21 remarkable that I released von Umbra.

Speaker 15 You signed his early release?

Speaker 21 Yes, as a State Secretary for Justice, I said, okay, you're now very old and you can go a few years earlier, you can go to your family.

Speaker 15 And now, Franz van Anrat 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.

Speaker 15 I want to ask him about his side of the story, how he feels about his crimes now, after all those years in prison.

Speaker 15 So I find a telephone number linked to his name and I give it a go.

Speaker 15 There's no answer, but then suddenly someone calls me back.

Speaker 15 Hallo.

Speaker 17 Yes, um, hello there, good, uh, very good afternoon.

Speaker 15 Uh you ring Yes, yes, hello, I'm trying to reach Franz van Anrat.

Speaker 15 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. Okay, no need to be so angry.

Speaker 15 Why would you be that angry?

Speaker 15 That's such a weird reaction, don't you think?

Speaker 15 We have one more number to try, this time for Franz van Anrat's son.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 15 Hello, is that Michael van Anrat?

Speaker 15 It's the same person as before. Hello, Mr.
Van Anrat.

Speaker 15 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.

Speaker 15 It's a hard no, but we do chat for a while before he ends the call. I don't want to bother you.

Speaker 15 That's interesting. He's very angry, clearly.

Speaker 15 And I guess it's had a massive impact on his life. He grew up in Iraq as a result of this.

Speaker 15 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.

Speaker 15 It's very much seen from his perspective.

Speaker 26 And he knew about Peter Valisek?

Speaker 15 Oh, he knew exactly who Peter Valisek was.

Speaker 15 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.

Speaker 15 And given that Michael, the son, has probably been stigmatised by what his father has done,

Speaker 15 the fact that Peter Valiszek is still free and has never done a sentence for his crimes must really just be salt in the wound for him.

Speaker 15 Over the phone, Michael van Anrach claims that it's not just Peter Valisek who got away with it.

Speaker 15 He tells us to look at other companies and the governments backing them, who he says did exactly what his father did, helped helped create chemical weapons, but have never had to pay compensation or sit in a prison cell watching their life pass by.

Speaker 15 What if Michael Van Anrat has a point? Could there be another bigger reason that Peter Valicek has never been held to account? And if he got away with it once, What's to say he ever stopped?

Speaker 15 That's next time.

Speaker 24 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.

Speaker 18 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 Walicek's bank account.
I bet you it came out of Iran's bank account.

Speaker 12 I have there many friends, they were all from the heart,

Speaker 12 like Hamas,

Speaker 15 like Hamas,

Speaker 5 yeah.

Speaker 26 Thanks for listening to The Gas Man. It's reported by Chloe Hajimathayu and produced by me, Claudia Williams.
It's written by both of us.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 26 With thanks to Owen Mull, Dan Cazetta, Martin Hahn, Kavita Puri, Matt Russell and Katie Gunning.

Speaker 26 You can listen to more episodes today by subscribing to Tortoise Plus or by downloading the Tortoise app.

Speaker 26 You can listen to our previous investigations right here on Tortoise Investigates while you wait for the next episode.

Speaker 26 And to hear more from our award-winning newsroom, search for Tortoise wherever you get your podcasts.

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