Saddam's arms dealer awaits fate while selling wine in Chilean countryside

[Rose Siding]

SANTA CRUZ, Chile - Carlos Cardoen smiled, swished the sour cherry liqueur in his goblet and downed it in one swallow.

He used to be known as one of the world's most notorious merchants of death, a "black widow spider" who made cluster bombs for Saddam Hussein during the Iraq-Iran war in the 1980s. He even hung Saddam's portrait in a place of honor in a Santiago factory.
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Cardoen manufactured cluster bombs, which contained hundreds of tiny bomblets in one big bomb that shredded everything over a wide area. This weapon was effective for Saddam because it reduced the need for his relatively unskilled air force to precisely target Iran's troops.
Unlike most arms dealers, Cardoen didn't hide from the news media. He said that if General Motors and Fiat could make weapons, so could he, and he openly thanked Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., for sponsoring measures in the mid-1970s that prohibited the United States from selling arms to Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.
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In 1993, the U.S. Attorney's Office in Miami indicted Cardoen on charges that he imported zirconium from the United States for use in manufacturing cluster bombs when he'd said he'd use the metal for mining.
Then and now, Cardoen said U.S. officials unofficially approved of his sales since they didn't want Iran under the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to win the war. Documents surfaced at the time showing that U.S. agencies knew that Cardoen was manufacturing cluster bombs for Iraq when he purchased the zirconium.
The case has never advanced. Cardoen has refused to go to the United States to be tried, and U.S. authorities can't extradite him from Chile.

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