Trial Report: Thirty-Three

This report covers the period Monday 30 October - Friday 3 November 2000.

Monday October 30, 2000

The court resumed in Pretoria after having heard the evidence of David and Jane Webster in Jacksonville, Florida, USA. The first witness to be called was Reverend Frank Chikane, currently director-general in the president's office and secretary of the cabinet. He is also pastor of the New Apostolic Faith Mission in Naledi, Soweto and chairman of the International Council of Churches. Reverend Chikane was an outspoken anti-apartheid activist and church leader during the 1980s. Rev. Chikane told the court in detail of his experiences in 1989 when he believed he was poisoned. He fell ill repeatedly during a trip to Namibia and a subsequent trip to the USA. One four occasions he nearly lost his life as a result of what he believes to have been an attempted assassination through poisoning. The defence team put no questions to Chikane during cross examination.

The next witness was Dr Daniel Smith, a gastro-intestinal specialist from the University of Wisconsin Medical School, who was Chikane's primary physician on all three occasions that he was hospitalized in the USA in 1989. Among the documents filed with the court is the incident report from the University of Wisconsin police, tests carried out on Chikane's wristwatch and shoes and tests conducted by the US Department of Agriculture. A published article produced by the defence team during cross-examination of Dr Andre Immelman was also filed by the State. This is an article on organophosphate poisoning based on the results obtained in the Chikane case by the Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene. FBI test reports were also filed with the court. During each of Rev. Chikane's hospitalizations tests were conducted in an attempt to determine the nature of his illness. On the third occasion that he was hospitalized the presence of P.nitrophenol, a breakdown product of many organophosphates in Chikane's urine sample, along with the earlier test results, provided "strong evidence", according to Smith, that Chikane had been exposed to an organophosphate. He claimed this was "the single best explanation" for his illness.

During cross examination of the witness, Adv. Cilliers asked Smith why it had taken so long for him to diagnose organophosphate poisoning and why he had failed to treat Chikane with atropine when he was first admitted. Smith explained this saying that Chikane had not been exposed to organophosphates in the normal course of his activities and was an unlikely candidate for organophosphate poisoning. The case was also confused by Chikane's rapid recovery between bouts of illness.

The next witness was Dr Thomas Lynch, a chemist and bacteriologist who joined the Federal Bureau of Investigation as a special agent in 1981. He is a certified forensic laboratory examiner and spent almost 10 years in the FBI's chemical toxicology unit The only time Lynch has ever been involved in the identification of Paranitratephenols was in the Chikane case, when he conducted tests on blood, urine and personal effects. In the urine he found P.nitrophenol, a metabolite of a number of insecticides, including Parathion, Methylthion and Chlorothion. It is also the metabolic pathway breakdown from Parathion to Paraoxon. Clothing items were tested by steam distillation in four different batches, but no insecticides or nerve agents were found.

The presence of P.nitrophenol in the urine sample, together with the symptoms he was told the subject had shown, would be consistent with an acethecol esters inhibitor such as Parathion or Paraoxon, Lynch said, but his tests had not produced the parent compound.

In cross-examination, Cilliers put it to Lynch that he had not the slightest idea exactly where the blood and urine samples he had tested, had come from, or under what circumstances they had been obtained. Lynch conceded that he did not know who had initially taken the samples, but said when they reached him, they were in a sealed box and he could thus vouch for the integrity of the chain of evidence from the time the samples were handled by the FBI field office in Milwaukee. The defence challenged his certainty.

Tuesday October 31,2000

The day began with the admission of two affidavits which the defence has not placed in dispute. Jakobus Kotze formerly a security branch policeman who served at Jan Smuts airport (now Johannesburg International airport) states in his affidavit that he had assisted three security branch officers, Chris Smit, Manie van Staden and Gert Otto in obtaining passes which would grant them access to all areas of the airport. These three men are alleged to have been the recipients of toxins from RRL which was handed to them by Dr. Andre Immelman, according to his testimony in May this year. A second affidavit from a security policeman stationed at the airport confirms that the officer saw the three policemen in question at the airport on a number of occasions.

The first witness of the day was Charles Zeelie, warned against self-incrimination in the Chikane matter and the broad conspiracy charge (Charge 63). Zeelie joined the police in 1969, transferring to the Security Branch at John Vorster Square, Johannesburg, in July 1976. He is a qualified explosives expert and one of only a few security policemen, he claims, who underwent a three-week lock picking course. Zeelie testified that one weekend, he and Nanny Beyers (his colleague in the security branch) met Manie van Staden and Gert Otto at a restaurant at Jan Smuts Airport. He said such a meeting would usually have been arranged through his commanding officer. During the meeting, Zeelie and Beyers were told a Stratcom (a strategic communcation operation aimed at disrupting target organisations) was being planned during which a toxic substance would be applied to the clothing of Frank Chikane. Van Staden did most of the talking, and asked Zeelie if he had a contact in the airport security branch who could be trusted and could assist them during the operation. Zeelie assisted the two by putting them in touch with a contact person at the airport: Boela Botha.

Some time after this initial meeting, Zeelie and Beyers went to the airport one night and met Burger. Zeelie saw both Van Staden and Otto at the airport. As arranged, Burger brought a black suitcase to an office, where Zeelie and Beyers - another qualified police locksmith - picked the lock before handing the suitcase back to Burger. Zeelie does not know what happened thereafter, and cannot say if the suitcase was handed to Van Staden and Otto, though he remembers them being in the office at some point. Zeelie had told Burger that the suitcase they wanted, was that of Chikane. Some time thereafter Zeelie saw newspaper reports about Chikane's illness. During cross examination the defence team challenged Zeelie's testimony and his failure to have applied to the truth commission for amnesty for his role in the affair.

The next witness was Nanny Beyers, similarly warned against self-incrimination. Beyers was a security policeman responsible for monitoring religious and church support for the ANC and PAC, specifically via youth movements. He was also involved in ongoing surveillance of Beyers Naude, Frank Chikane, Saci Macozoma and Dr Wolfram Kirschner of Justice & Reconciliation. Beyers testified to his role in the interception of Chikane's suitcase at the airport. Beyers was unable to say definitively that the incident of the interception of the suitcase had to do with Chikane's poisoning.

Boela Burger then testified about his role in the interception of Chikane's suitcase, saying he handed the suitcase to Beyers and Zeelie.

The court adjourned to reconvene on Friday 3 November.

Friday November 3, 2000

The day began with the formal admission of three affidavits which have not been placed in dispute by the defence, thus obviating the need for the State to call these particular witnesses:

ARCHBISHOP DESMOND TUTU states that during August 1989, a monkey/baboon/ape foetus was suspended from a tree in the garden of his official residence at Bishopscourt, Cape Town, apparently in an attempt to intimidate him. The foetus was discovered by a gardener, who told Tutu about it. Tutu states that he was in no way intimidated by this crude attempt to capitalise on superstitious beliefs.

DULLAH OMAR states that in 1989, he was the legal representative of Bongani Jonas, who refused to testify for the State against (now ANC chief whip) Tony Yengeni. At the time, Omar was also president of the National Association of Democratic Lawyers (Nadel) and chairman of the United Democratic Front in the Western Cape and an active participant in the anti-apartheid movement. Since 1979, he had been suffering from a heart ailment, and used prescription medication daily to control the condition. Despite this, while attending a conference in Durban in 1989, he suffered a heart attack, was treated at St Augustine's Hospital and recuperated at the home of a doctor friend before returning to Cape Town. Omar was oblivious at the time to any attempt to assassinate him, and the alleged Civil Cooperation Bureau plot to do so by tampering with his medication only came to his notice at a much later stage.

PAUL ERASMUS, a security policeman from 1977 to 1993, states that while attached to the SA Council of Churches desk, he handled a number of informants. At some point, it came to his knowledge that there was an officially sanctioned plot to poison the Reverend Frank Chikane, and shortly afterwards, Erasmus himself placed Chikane's name on a hit list, after discussing the plan with fellow security policeman Nanny Beyers.

The defence has accepted the affidavits of another 25 State witnesses, whose testimony is similar to that of the above-mentioned three individuals. These statements will be formally filed with the court on Monday November 6.

The sole witness called by the State may not be identified or photographed and is known as Mr T, a former Civil Co-operation Bureau (CCB) operator.

Mr T revealed that he was the regional co-ordinator of the CCB's Region 9, specifically tasked to wage psychological warfare against "enemies of the apartheid state". Murder and physical violence played no part in the functions of Region 9, which made use of the services of psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists and even traditional witchdoctors to devise ways of intimidating selected targets. At some point during his CCB career, he acted as medical co-ordinator for Region 6, and later as intelligence co-ordinator for this region. As medical co-ordinator, he acted as liaison between the CCB regions and the "system". When a medical doctor or medication was needed, Mr T would be informed by the region concerned and he would feed the requirement up the chain of command. His chief link upwards was a medical doctor known to him as Frans.

Mr T confirmed that on Thursday November 2, he had identified a "big, blonde, bearded" man as Frans during consultation with State prosecutor Torie Pretorius. Frans was accompanied at the time by his attorney, Bernard van der Hoven.

He received substances in various forms - envelopes, plastic bags, wrapped parcels. He did not always know what was in the parcels, but assumed the substances would be used to further the aim of maximum disruption of the enemy. On one occasion, he recalls, he had to deliver a substance as innocuous as the cortisone ointment, Quadriderm.

At no time would he have known who the substances were to be used against. Nor did Mr T have any idea where Frans obtained the substances requested and handed over to CCB operators. Mr T testified to his role in the placing of a baboon foetus in Archbishop Tutu's garden saying he believed it would have intimidated the Archbishop into withdrawing from public life for a period. 20

Regarding the attempted murder of Dullah Omar, Mr T played a "small" role as a courier. He was given a plastic packet of white pills by Slang van Zyl which he in turn handed to "someone" at head office - he claims he cannot remember who - and that was the last he saw of them. Defence counsel Adv. Jaap Cilliers drew attention to the fact that Mr T specifically referred to white pills, while the Indoril heart medication containing Digoxin, which Omar was using at the time, is pink in colour. In cross-examination, Cilliers put it to Mr T that it was absurd to suggest that Basson, already a cardiologist at the time, would not have known that the white pills could not be Indoril.

In cross-examination, Adv. Cilliers put it to Mr T that in his affidavit, he says he knew Dr Frans as the medical officer for "the unit" who provided legitimate medication to members. Any suggestion that Dr Frans supplied any substances other than legitimate medication, could thus be nothing more than speculation on Mr T's part, said Cilliers. Furthermore, Mr T had to admit that as far as he knew, Dr Frans was never involved in any physical violence, and that he has no knowledge of Basson having anything at all to do with the CCB.

This report has been prepared by Chandré Gould and Marlene Burger. Chandré  Gould is a research associate at the Centre for Conflict Resolution working on the Chemical and Biological Warfare Research Project. Marlene Burger is monitoring the trial  as part of the CCR Chemical and Biological Warfare Research Project. The Chemical and Biological Warfare Research Project is funded by the Ford Foundation, the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung and the Norwegian Government.

Centre for Conflict Resolution, UCT, Private Bag, Rondebosch, 7701, South Africa Tel: (27) 21-4222512 Fax: (27) 21-4222622 Email: [email protected]