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Trial Report: Sixty - third report on the closing arguments

This report covers the first two weeks of court proceedings of 2002: January 28 - February 6.

Launching his final argument for Basson's guilt on the remaining 18 human rights violation charges, prosecutor Dr Torie Pretorius said there could be no doubt that the accused was part of a conspiracy to murder enemies of the apartheid government, and as such, was instrumental in supplying a range of deadly toxins to undercover agents to carry out the deeds.

He said the State had presented overwhelming evidence from 60 witnesses to prove that Basson had the opportunity, the infrastructure and the ability to supply these poisons, and at least one witness had been categoric in identifying "Doc Wouter's team" as the supply channel.

Because Basson has proved himself to be a master of deception, the court would have to scrutinise his own testimony with extreme caution. There could be no doubt that a conspiracy existed within the SA Defence Force's Special Forces unit to eliminate selected targets, or that poison was one of assassination weapons available to ensure that the murders could not be traced back to the SADF.

Amid the smoke and mirrors of the intelligence community, considerable care is taken to carry out covert operations in such manner that they can be plausibly denied, and so it was within the Civil Cooperation Bureau and its forerunner, Barnacle. If any of the murders to which agents of those units have confessed had been linked to the State at the time, it would have been extremely embarrassing for the government of the day, hence extra-special care was taken to ensure this did not occur.

Numerous "cut-out" points had been built into the delivery channels and all operations were carried out on a strictly enforced need-to-know basis. Because of these safeguards, none of the witnesses called by the State had been able to provide the court with a full or complete picture, but the cumulative effect of all the evidence provided all the proof needed.

There could be no doubt that the lethal injections administered to victims killed by the mastermind of Operation Dual, Johan Theron, had been supplied by Basson, or that Theron was telling the truth when he said Basson taught him how to use the substances.

Strict control over the medication concerned had been exercised by Basson, who was in charge of issuing medical supplies to rebel movements and all covert units within the South African security forces. He alone – or doctors acting on his orders - had been in a position to supply Theron with substances such as Scoline, Tubarine, Ketelaar and Vesperax.

The defence offered by Basson was a vivid example of his ability to manipulate the truth so as to exonerate himself. No matter what question he was asked, he was able to come up with an answer that might well be credible in different circumstances, but the court could not lose sight of Basson's own admission that throughout his association with Project Coast, his life was based on "lies and deceit". He was a glib and highly skilled liar, and had even admitted that he deliberately misled his superior officers from time to time. By his own admission, he was both a skilled wheeler and dealer and an international drug smuggler, who had worked with "people who were not angels" and huge amounts of "funny money".

Over the years, Basson had acquired a collection of persona, and was particularly adept at coming up with plausible stories and explanations to extricate himself from potentially difficult situations.

Pretorius said that nothing in Basson's testimony had indicated that he was doing anything in court that he had not done successfully a hundred times before, namely misleading the court about his role and involvement with the supply of toxins.

Furthermore, Basson's defence team had failed to refute key testimony about the supply of the toxins used. In fact, "very little" of the evidence given by veterinary toxicologist Dr Andre Immelman had even been placed in dispute.

Immelman, a vital witness for the State, was a senior member of the management team at Roodeplaat Research Laboratories, one of the SA Defence Force's chemical and biological warfare front companies, from January 1984 until it was shut down in 1992. It was in that capacity that he supplied covert operators with a variety of poisonous substances on request, acting in accordance with direct instructions from Basson.

Despite the fact that scientists working for Project Coast were in agreement that they did not want to know the details of any secret operations or the identity of any targets for elimination, Immelman had pointed out that they were all highly intelligent, and in time, became suspicious about the use of certain substances produced at RRL.

Immelman used the codename Willem and presented himself as a farmer when he handed over such items as anthrax-laced cigarettes, vials of cholera bacteria, a baboon foetus and the deadly poison Paraoxon to members of the Civil Cooperation Bureau or the Security Police. The court should not lose sight of the fact that several of those meetings took place by arrangement in Basson's own office at the headquarters of the SA Medical Services in Centurion.

Immelman also told the court that he and Basson were the only two people who acted as liaison channels between RRL and the SADF. All research done at RRL was determined by Basson and all reports were delivered to him.

Immelman had confirmed that Basson had access to a variety of toxic substances and pathogens were available from or made by RRL and that a number of them had been supplied to Basson, such as beer laced with Thallium.

When Immelman became suspicious about what such items were being used for, he confronted Basson, and was assured that "all projects" involving toxins were authorised by the State Security Council – a group of whose existence he had never even heard until Basson mentioned it. [Note from the authors: the State Security Council was a high level decision-making structure which fell just below Cabinet. It was chaired by the President.]

When Basson instructed Immelman to start supplying substances to "outsiders" – such as Chris, Gert and Manie, later identified as members of the Security Police – he began keeping a record so that Basson would know exactly what had been given to which non-SADF people. Immelman was adamant that "nothing" left RRL's premises without Basson's approval, and testified that he would never have given toxins to anyone without Basson's authorisation.

The court had heard repeatedly from those involved in the CCB chain of command how these toxins ended up in the hands of covert operators, Pretorius argued – not, as Basson claimed, for further research, but for use as assassination weapons. Most of the substances supplied by Immelman fell into the category of super-toxins and were supplied in lethal doses.

Pretorius said it could not be mere coincidence that the dates on which Immelman was requested to supply toxins and the delivery dates dovetailed in almost every case neatly with the dates of known attacks on such people as the Reverend Frank Chikane, Transport Minister Dullah Omar and other "enemies of the state" targeted by CCB operators whose testimony confirmed their involvement in these murder plots.

Yet Basson's defence team had failed completely to shake Immelman's testimony during cross-examination, and where aspects of it could not be explained away by improvisation, the defence had chosen to simply ignore the evidence, said Pretorius.

As far as self-confessed killers such as Theron and Danie Phaal were concerned, however odious the court might find the grisly tasks they carried out, there could be no question about their truthfulness, even in the measure to which they implicated Basson.

The prosecution had been aware of only a few alleged murders when these witnesses were first approached, and had it not been for the additional information they volunteered, of which the State knew nothing and would probably never have learned otherwise, some of the operations in which they took part could have remained secret forever.

Why, asked Pretorius, would any person lie in order to place himself at the centre of such horrific deeds? It was simply unthinkable that witnesses would implicate themselves in cold-blooded murder, merely to satisfy an old grudge against any accused, let alone against Basson, for whom witness after witness still expressed respect.

The fact that Basson had been acting on the orders of more senior officers, did not excuse his culpability. The law of the land was extremely clear in this respect: All members of the security forces are subject to the same law as any other citizen if they are guilty of committing criminal acts.

The court had no option but to find that the heinous crimes outlined by the likes of Theron had indeed taken place, and that they could not have taken place without the active assistance of the accused, the doyen of poison within military ranks.

Similar facts and the cumulative evidence left no doubt that what was begun by Barnacle, was simply continued by the CCB, and however much the accused improvised his defence, the totality of the evidence against him could only be interpreted by the court as irrefutable proof that he is guilty as charged.

The counter-argument by defence advocate Jaap Cilliers mirrored the argument presented early last year, when he sought Basson's acquittal on all the human rights charges, and which was reported comprehensively at the time.

If anything, however, Cilliers has become even more vicious in the interim, accusing Pretorius this week of having lost his objectivity as an officer of the court to such an extent that his approach "borders on the unethical".

It was totally beyond Cilliers' comprehension that a man of Dr Basson's calibre should have been prosecuted in this manner, while a detestable psycopath like Johan Theron – a man so repugnant that he "probably eats human flesh" – was walking around a free man.

Judge Willie Hartzenberg continued to offer an alternative defence from the bench, sketching scenarios that have not been considered by Basson's advocates. The latest, for example, is a suggestion that Theron could have stolen the poisoned beer which he wanted to place at taxi ranks in the Eastern Cape, without the knowledge of anyone, including the accused.

The final session of argument on the fraud charges starts on Monday, 18 February and will again be presented by junior advocate Werner Bouwer. Senior prosecutor Anton Ackermann will be in attendance, but intends sticking to his decision, made late last year, that he will no longer argue this case before this judge, as he is simply wasting his time.

 

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. Additional funding for trial monitoring was made available by the Swiss Campaign for cancellation of the Apartheid Debt and Reparations for Southern Africa.

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

 
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