U.S. Businessman Guilty of Arms Sales to Iraq

American businessman Sahib Abd al-Amir al-Haddad was sentenced to four years and nine months in prison by the state court in Mannheim on Friday for organizing a shipment of drills to Iraq that could have been used to make long-range cannons.

The court said the 60-year-old defendant had worked as a middleman for delivering the specialized drills via Jordan to Iraq in 1999. The two shipments were worth €205,000 ($245,000).

He was convicted of breaking German export laws and breaching a U.N. weapons embargo.

The prosecution said the equipment could have been used to construct boring tubes for long-range cannons, capable of launching nuclear, chemical or biological warheads.

"Not just a slip-up"

The ruling judge said the defendant had served as a broker in the weapons industry. "This was not just a slip-up," Judge Joachim Plass said. The court was convinced that the equipment was designed for the construction of weapons, although it was not clear what happened to the drills after shipment.

The Iraqi-born businessman, who holds a U.S. passport but was based in Jordan, was arrested in Bulgaria in November 2002 and extradited to Germany in March 2003.

The district attorney had requested a sentence of five years. The defense argued al-Haddad was innocent, saying the charges were pure speculation.

In January, the Mannheim court convicted two German businessmen for their role in the shipment, which prosecutors said was sent to Iraq through al-Haddad in Jordan.

The court sentenced 59-year old engineer Bernd Schompeter to five years and three months in prison. His 54-year-old accomplice, Willi Heinz Hermann Ribbeck (photo, left), received a two-year probationary term.