GERMANY’S role in helping to rearm Iraq will come under fresh scrutiny after two businessmen were accused of acquiring equipment for President Saddam Hussein’s much-coveted supercannon.

The arrests underline fears that Saddam’s network has been actively shopping on the world’s black markets despite a 12-year United Nations embargo on arms imports.

The prosecutor’s office in Mannheim confirmed yesterday that two Germans would be tried in January for shipping drilling tools to Iraq via Jordan. “The equipment was exported to Jordan solely to avoid compliance with the embargo on military shipments to Iraq,” Hubert Jobski, a prosecutor, said.

The drills can be used to manufacture the tubes of Iraq’s planned al-Fao supercannon, which could fire shells armed with atomic, biological or chemical agents up to 35 miles. The equipment was delivered between April 1999 and December 2000, which suggests that Baghdad has been actively constructing its supercannon. It is not known if any have been built.

The importance of the trial, which comes after a complex three-year investigation, is that it will show that although UN inspectors destroyed much of Saddam’s chemical weapons arsenal before 1998, and seriously depleted his bio-weapons programme, the West has done little to destroy the network buying arms and technology. The absence of UN inspectors and Iraq’s growing revenues from black-market oil have allowed Baghdad’s middlemen to continue shopping in Europe.

The al-Fao, a 290mm gun, is smaller than earlier supercannon and is regarded as quicker, cheaper and more effective than Scud missiles.

Bernd Schompeter, one of the accused in the forthcoming trial, bought drilling equipment from German companies, Burgsmüller GmbH and Iftek GmbH. The sellers were told that the equipment was bound for Jordan.

Neither Herr Schompeter nor his co-defendant, named as Willy R., have entered a plea.

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