Details of an alleged plot by Saddam Hussein’s regime to acquire the means to deliver weapons of mass destruction were laid out before a German court yesterday.
Two German businessmen went on trial in Mannheim, charged with supplying Iraq with equipment for the manufacture of a giant cannon.
After reading the indictment, the prosecutor, Stephan Morweiser, told reporters that the weapon would be ”capable of firing not only conventional, but also nuclear, biological and chemical weapons”.
Iraq has dismissed the allegations as part of a plot inspired by Israel and the US.
The trial, which promises to shed more light on Iraq’s re-armament programme than the UN’s weapons inspectors have so far been able to do, will come as an embarrassment to the German authorities.
Germany is desperately trying to strengthen ties with the US which were strained by the centre-left government’s opposition to a war on Iraq.
The case has again turned the spotlight on the leading role played by German businesses in arming America’s least favourite country.
The two defendants, Bernd Schompeter (59) and Willi Heinz Ribbeck (53) face up to 15 years in prison if convicted. The most serious charges are that in 1999 they acted as intermediaries in a string of deals worth â,¬250 000, aimed at supplying drills ”capable of and made to” bore the huge barrels needed for Iraq’s al-Fao cannon project.
Al-Fao, a 210-millimetre gun that can be driven like a lorry, was the brainchild of a Canadian artillery engineer, Gerald Bull, whose involvement with an earlier planned Iraqi ”supergun” is thought to have led to his murder in Paris in 1990. The al-Fao is designed to fire a 100kg projectile some 55 kilometres, making it a clear danger for troops invading Iraq.
Schompeter was arrested in October 2001. According to the prosecution, he purchased machinery from two German companies and arranged for it to be shipped via Jordan, to hide its true destination.
Schompeter, who lives with his 89 year-old mother, proved to have little in common with the popular image of an international arms trader. The court heard how his career had begun promisingly after he left university with degrees in engineering and business administration, but had since been littered with business failures and marred by a spell in jail for tax evasion.
After the collapse of a Dubai-based venture in the late 1990s, he returned to Germany and began dealing with an American citizen of Iraqi origin, Sahib Abd al-Amir al-Haddad. The prosecution alleged that Al-Haddad (59) who was arrested in Bulgaria last November, ordered the goods on Iraq’s behalf. Berlin has requested his extradition.
Schompeter claimed in his evidence that he checked with the UN beforehand whether the equipment could legitimately be delivered.
”I did not know what [it was] going to be used for,” he said. ”I just wanted my commission.” But he added the arrival of long boxes at a warehouse in Dubai had made him wonder about their purpose. ”You ask yourself, what do you do with 12-metre drills?” he said.
His lawyer said: ”He isn’t the Mr Big. My client was used by Al-Haddad.”
He and Ribbeck are also alleged to have tried to deliver howitzer gun barrels to Iraq via Switzerland in 1999, and to have organised the sale of bullet-proof vests and braking parachutes for MiG jet fighter pilots through Ukraine in 1997 and 1998.
Additional reporting: Beate Steinhorst in Mannheim
Guardian Unlimited Â