Frans van Anraat, a Dutchman, will go on trial on Monday on charges of complicity in genocide.
He is accused of supplying the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein with chemicals used in attacks on Kurdish villages in the 1980s.
He claims that the supplies were legitimate business deals.
It is alleged that the gas was used in attacks on the villages of Halabja, Goptata, Birjinni and Zewa. The Dutch prosecutors claim that these attacks were intended to wipe out the ethnic Kurdish population, in whole or in part, and constitute genocide.
A verdict is expected in late December.
Van Anraat once topped the CIA's most wanted list, and was detained at the request of the US in Italy in 1989. He was released by an Italian judge who ruled the charges were politically motivated.
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