A Dutch court has ruled that the killing of thousands of Kurds in Iraq in the 1980s constituted an act of genocide.
The ruling came in the case of Dutch chemical merchant Frans van Anraat, who was given a 15-year sentence for selling chemicals to Saddam Hussein's regime.
Van Anraat (63) was not in the courtroom as the judges issued the verdict in the first court case anywhere concerning the killing of thousands of Iraqi Kurds with chemical weapons.
The court first determined that the slaughter of the Kurds constituted genocide - a finding that may reverberate in later charges against Saddam by an Iraqi court in Baghdad - and that the chemicals supplied by the businessman were essential to the making of the weapons.
But the court said Van Anraat could not be held responsible for genocide since his chemicals were delivered to Iraq before the mass killings began.
"All the deliveries took place before March 16, 1988; therefore, the defendant must be acquitted of complicity in genocide," it said, referring to the date of the attack on the village of Halabja where some 5,000 Kurds were killed. Dozens of ethnic Kurds gathered at the courtroom to hear the verdict.
"These attacks were committed with the intent to destroy the Kurdish population of Iraq," the ruling said. "The court finds the intent of destruction was targeted against part of the Kurdish group as part of a genocidal intent."
More than 50 relatives of victims, men and women, some in traditional dress, followed the proceedings in a separate room through interpreters into English, Farsi and Arabic.
Some clapped when the sentence was read out while outside the court dozens danced in a circle to beating drums. Banners attached to fences outside the court read: "The Hiroshima of Kurdistan is Halabja" and "Halabja genocide never again".
In a magazine interview in 2003, Van Anraat admitted to supplying the chemicals but he denied knowing they were destined for Iraq and that they would be used to make poison gas.