Decades of Suspicions: Did German Companies Aid Syrian Chemical Weapons
Program?
By Gunther Latsch, Fidelius Schmid and Klaus Wiegrefe DER SPIEGEL January
23, 2015 – 06:13 PM
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/german-companies-suspected-of-aiding-syrian-chemical-weapons-program-a-1014722.html

Government documents and information from the Assad regime indicate that
German companies may have helped Syria produce chemical weapons over the
course of decades. So far, the Merkel administration has shown no
willingness to investigate.

When it comes to war crimes and crimes against humanity, the German
government is unyielding -- particularly when it comes to finding excuses
for why it should do nothing when it comes to potential German perpetrators.

For more than 16 months, Chancellor Angela Merkel's government has been in
possession of a list containing the names of German companies thought to
have helped Syrian dictator Bashar Assad and his father Hafis build up
Syria's chemical weapons arsenal over the course of several decades.
Ultimately, it became one of the largest such arsenals in the world.

The German government, a coalition between Merkel's conservatives and Vice
Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel's center-left Social Democrats (SPD), received the
list from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).
The OPCW was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2013 for its "extensive
efforts to eliminate chemical weapons." Together with experts from the
United Nations, the OPCW organized and carried out the destruction of Syrian
chemical weapons last year.

Berlin immediately classified the list and has since kept it under lock and
key. The government says that releasing the names would "significantly
impair foreign policy interests and thus the welfare of the Federal Republic
of Germany." It also argues that doing so would be akin to releasing "trade
secrets" and as such would violate the German constitution.

It is an astonishing justification when one considers what Assad's German
suppliers enabled the dictator to do. Over the years, the Syrians produced
and stored poison gas weapons with an explosive power of more than 1,500
megatons. Among the weapons was the nerve gas sarin, which disrupts
neurotransmitters leading to tortuous cramping and suffocation. More than
1,400 people have been killed by poisonous gas during the ongoing civil war
in Syria, though it has not been conclusively proven whether the chemical
weapons were deployed by the Syrian army or by opposition militias.

Foreign Ministry files make it clear that Berlin had indications that German
companies may have been involved in chemical weapons production long before
the OPCW delivered its list. The Institut fur Zeitgeschichte (Institute for
Contemporary History), which is funded by the government, regularly
publishes important documents after the standard 30-year embargo has
expired. The most recently published inventory, stemming from 1984, included
a document that the government may have accidentally released. It includes
the names of companies suspected of supplying the Syrian chemical weapons
program, including the glass producer Schott, laboratory equipment producer
Kolb, technology company Heraeus, the former Hoechst subsidiary Riedel-de
Haen, pharmaceutical company Merck and the company Gerrit van Delden.

Zero Interest

The paper is a memo relating to the Dec. 6, 1984 visit of the then-Israeli
Ambassador to Germany Yitzhak Ben-Ari to a deputy section head in the German
Foreign Ministry. Ben-Ari presented the Germans with "intelligence service
findings" indicating that since the mid-1970s, scientists had been seeking
to produce chemical weapons for Syria "disguised as agricultural and medical
research." The ambassador said that the chemistry department of the Centre
d'Etudes et des Recherches Scientifiques in Damascus, a research center that
received funding from UNESCO, led the top secret program.

Ben-Ari said that a pilot facility had already been built and that, in 1982,
Syria had signed contracts with European companies relating to three
production lines. Ben-Ari believed that by 1985, Syria would have the
capacity to produce 700 kilograms (1,543 pounds) of sarin -- enough to kill
several million people.

The Foreign Ministry promised to investigate. But the list of participating
German companies that the Assad regime turned over to the OPCW 16 months
ago, raises doubts as to whether such an investigation ever took place. As
part of the destruction of its chemical weapons arsenal, Syria was required
to name all of its suppliers.

Normally in such a situation, German agencies or ministries would establish
a committee of historians to explore their own histories and air out any
dirty laundry they might find. The Merkel administration, though, has shown
zero interest in clearing up this episode of Germany's postwar history.

The lack of motivation is hardly surprising. The issue is not only that of
unscrupulous German companies. Rather, it also exposes the hypocrisy of a
number of German chancellors, particularly that of Helmut Kohl, the father
of reunification and long-time head of the Christian Democrats, the party
currently led by Angela Merkel. Kohl was the chancellor of West Germany in
1983 when the issue of chemical weapons arose.

Three years prior, Iraq had invaded Iran, but was pushed back soon
thereafter. The result was that Iraq deployed poison gas almost daily
against Iranian troops. By the end of the war in 1988, thousands of Iranians
had lost their lives by way of mustard gas or sarin. That same year,
Saddam's henchmen deployed gas against Iraqi Kurds.

Knowingly or Unknowingly

The documents recently released by the Foreign Ministry contain much more
information about the construction of chemical weapons production facilities
in Iraq than they do about the efforts being undertaken in neighboring
Syria. In both cases, the documents suggest that successive German
governments protected companies that -- knowingly or unknowingly -- colluded
with mass murderers. The practice extended from Kohl to Merkel, from Kohl's
Economics Minister Otto Graf Lambsdorff to current SPD Economics Minister
Gabriel.

Furthermore, those companies named by the Syrian government two years ago as
suppliers to its chemical weapons program in documents handed over to the
UN/OPCW commission were likely previously active in Iraq.

The company Karl Kolb GmbH & Co. KG, from the town of Dreieich in Hesse, for
example. On Dec. 12, 1984, a representative of the US State Department told
the German Embassy in Washington that the company had delivered "chemical
research and production equipment for the manufacture of large quantities of
nerve gas" to Iraq. At the time, Saddam Hussein was building the "most
modern chemical weapons factory of its time," as an international team of
experts pronounced in 2004, though it was disguised as a pesticide factory.
Pilot Plant GmbH, a company that was closely tied with Kolb, delivered a
total of four facilities at a total cost of 7.5 million deutsche marks. In
the files, only the company name Kolb is mentioned.

American diplomats in Bonn -- which was the capital of West Germany at the
time -- frequently pressured the German government to rein in the companies,
sometimes even on a daily basis. They wanted Kohl and Foreign Minister
Hans-Dietrich Genscher to force Kolb to withdraw its technicians and "via
pressure on the company prevent Iraq from producing C-weapons."

The Cold War was still underway at the time and West Germany was dependent
on its superpower ally. Furthermore, the connection of "poisonous gas" with
"Germany" was one that Bonn wished to avoid: The Nazis, after all, had used
hydrocyanic acid manufactured by German chemical companies to murder
death-camp inmates during the Holocaust.

'Whatever it Takes'

As a result, the chancellor and his deputy took control of the issue, as
internal government memos show. Foreign Ministry diplomats noted that the
"minister places high value on a complete investigation" and wants
"assurances that nothing more will be delivered." The file notes that Kohl
too saw "grave foreign and security policy aspects" which spoke to the
necessity of ensuring that deliveries to Samarra cease. He ordered his staff
to "eliminate the problem, whatever it takes."

Astonishingly, however, his order was not followed.

The documents show that Kolb ignored government demands that it cease its
involvement in the Samarra project. The company insisted that the equipment
delivered by Pilot Plant were only suitable for the manufacture of
pesticides. Furthermore, the company argued, it had adhered to all
stipulations laid out for such deals, which was true.

When Israel threatened to bomb Samarra in the summer of 1984, the German
government advised all companies to withdraw their personnel, which Kolb did
according to diplomat notes. But the company callously sent Polish experts
to replace them.

Internally and in talks with the Americans, the German government argued
that their hands were tied due to laws governing foreign trade. When it came
to Samarra, there was "no legal lever," a Foreign Ministry department head
pronounced regretfully.

He was not wrong. The export of pesticide equipment didn't even have to be
approved until 1987, despite the fact that such equipment could easily be
modified for the production of chemical weapons. Legal proceedings against
Kolb and Pilot Plant in the 1990s ended in acquittal due to a loophole in
existing penal law, the judge found.

But why did that loophole exist? Were Kohl and Lambsdorff really caught off
guard by the chemical weapons issue? Or was the murky legal situation
desired so as to protect German business interests?

Preventing Controls

The Economics Ministry was responsible for export controls -- a ministry
that was led by politicians from the business-friendly Free Democratic Party
from 1969 to 1998. They believed their job was to do all they could to
promote exports and to otherwise stay out of the way. In the Kolb case,
Economics Ministry officials did what they could to prevent controls from
being applied.

Still, even prior to 1984, there was plenty of information available. As
early as 1978, a former intelligence official told SPIEGEL, Germany's
foreign intelligence service BND had solid evidence regarding Saddam's
German helpers. The official said that you would have to have been naive or
unscrupulous to not recognize that Samarra was a chemical weapons facility.
"There isn't a pesticide factory in the whole world where the equipment is
dug into the ground or where the facilities are separated by several
kilometers. On top of that, the whole thing was guarded, was located in the
middle of the desert and had no infrastructure connections to other chemical
industries or to highways. Also suspicious was the fact that all
administrative buildings were located on the upwind side. That isn't
necessary for a pesticide factory."

But BND reports to the Foreign Ministry about deliveries made by German
companies were not desired by top ministry officials. "During one of my
meetings with a ministry official, he showed me comments made on my report
by the minister's office. In green or purple ink, Genscher had written
across the first page: 'What business is that of theirs?'" Formally,
Genscher was correct: The BND was not allowed to spy on German companies.
But it was an approach that benefitted Saddam Hussein.

The retired BND official recalls that German intelligence also had detailed
knowledge of the Syrian chemical weapons program at least since 1982. His
recollections would seem to be supported by a compilation established by the
BND listing goods delivered to Syria and handed to the German government
last year in connection with the OPCW list.

German companies, for example, provided equipment for the manufacture of
methylphosphonyl difluoride, which can be combined with isopropanol for the
production of sarin. German intelligence knew about such shipments in 1983.
But nothing happened.

Largely Useless

Under American pressure, the German cabinet met in the summer of 1984 to
consider the introduction of permit requirements for the export of equipment
that could be used in the manufacture of chemical weapons. In preparation
for a meeting on the issue between Kohl, Genscher and Economics Minister
Lambsdorff, a ministry official noted that such a step could harm "foreign
trade with facilities and chemical equipment, which is of particular
importance for the (Federal Republic) of Germany."

Ultimately, a permit requirement was introduced. But, whether intentional or
not, it quickly proved to be largely useless.

Even today, many years later, the German government's behavior with regards
to chemical weapons raises questions. When Left Party parliamentarian Jan
van Aken, a former UN biological weapons inspector, made an official inquiry
regarding the OPCW list, he was only allowed to read the government's
response in a room in parliament specially designed for reviewing top secret
documents. It is an unusual procedure: In previous, comparable cases,
members of the Economic Affairs Committee were informed along with the
president of the Bundestag. But parliamentarians still haven't learned the
names of the German companies that delivered supplies.

The companies suspected of having been involved have shown little desire to
come clean. Riedel-de Haen was sold to Honeywell in 1995 and management says
that they have no documents pertaining to the period before the sale. Schott
und Heraeus likewise said that there are "no records" documenting business
deals completed decades in the past. As such, the company said, they were
unable to answer questions regarding deliveries to Syria.

Merck insisted that it "neither constructed facilities nor delivered
equipment for the construction of chemical facilities." It also noted that
isopropanol, which had been mentioned in the Foreign Ministry documents,
"was not controlled until 2014." The company presumes that "in the past too
all of the required permits were applied for and received."

Already Dead

Kolb had not responded to two SPIEGEL inquiries by the time this article was
published.

The companies would seem to have little to fear from a legal perspective. In
March, ex-biological weapons inspector van Aken filed an official complaint
against the companies involved with Germany's chief federal prosecutor "due
to assistance in crimes against humanity and war crimes." Furthermore, the
Foreign Ministry passed along the OPCW list, including the names of the
companies in question, to the prosecutor's office.

The result has been a few inquiries made with the customs office and with
the foreign intelligence agency BND. But the effort was aimed more at
determining whether the statute of limitations had already passed and a
formal investigation has not been launched.

The government, meanwhile, has justified its refusal to publicize the list
of Assad's suppliers by referencing concerns of "grave consequences" that
could extend to "existential threats." Furthermore, they say it would be a
violation of constitutional guarantees relating to business dealings. The
rights of poison gas victims to life are apparently not as important. They
are, after all, already dead.