Court Sentences American in Arms-Related Deal With Iraq

A German court sentenced an American businessman to four years and nine months in prison Friday for organizing a 1999 shipment to Iraq of drills that could be used to make a long-range cannon.

Iraqi-born Sahib Abd Amir Haddad, 60, who holds a U.S. passport but lived in Amman, Jordan, was convicted of violating German export laws and attempting to violate arms control regulations.

Prosecutors said the 30-foot-long machines were capable of boring cannon tubes for a 209-millimeter cannon that could fire biological and chemical weapons, corresponding to a cannon developed by Iraq called the Al Fao. That use would be in violation of a U.N. weapons embargo and German export laws.

Haddad was extradited this year from Bulgaria, where he was arrested last November on a German warrant.

In testimony, he denied delivering “a single projectile to the Iraqi government” and said he last had dealings with Iraq in 1996. He said that he had seen the drills -- which he described as old and rusty -- on their arrival in Jordan, but that he had merely been handling a request from a Jordanian firm.