Iraq has signed an international treaty banning the use of chemical weapons. It is the 186th country to join the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.

Iraq regularly used chemical weapons during the war with Iran between 1980 and 1988. Many thousands of Iranian soldiers and Iraqi Kurds died a terrible death after being subjected to mustard gas or nerve gas. The chemical attack on Halabja, a Kurdish town in northern Iraq, in which 5,000 people were killed, is a well-known atrocity.

A Dutch businessman, Frans van Anraat, has been sentenced to 17 years in prison for supplying raw materials for chemical weapons to former dictator Saddam Hussein.

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