The Trial of Dr Death

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The Trial of 'Dr. Death'

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SOUTH AFRICA
The Trial of 'Dr. Death'

It could reveal some of apartheid's dirtiest secrets

By Tom Masland

First, the five captured guerrillas were handcuffed to trees. Then a physician rubbed a specially prepared gel on their bodies — and stepped back to study the effect. The experiment failed; the men survived. So the physician injected them with overdoses of the muscle relaxants Tuberine and Scoline. Soon their hearts slowed and their lungs collapsed. The result was duly recorded — and the dead prisoners' naked bodies were loaded on a plane and dumped into the South Atlantic.

The man accused of ordering that alleged 1983 experiment in Namibia is now on trial for mass murder, fraud and drug dealing. Dr. Wouter Basson, 49, a respected South African cardiologist, became infamous last year when he was revealed to have led a decadelong effort to develop chemical and biological weapons for the white-minority regime. The aims allegedly included developing bacteria that would kill only blacks, vaccines to make black women infertile and a hypothetical substance designed to kill its victims without leaving a trace. Basson maintains his innocence. As the trial of "Dr. Death," as the South African press calls him, opened last week, his attorney moved to have the most serious charges thrown out on legal grounds. Whatever the ruling, the landmark trial could last two years — and may put some of apartheid's dirtiest secrets on the public record.

Basson was a bright child. The son of an Afrikaner police colonel and an opera singer, he sailed through medical school, was conscripted into the military at 24 as a medic and was posted to "the border" — the war zones in neighboring Namibia, Angola and Mozambique. A paratrooper, he jumped repeatedly behind enemy lines. He thrived on military life and stayed on, rising to the rank of brigadier by 30.

His special duties began in the early 1980s. Alarmed by the growing strength of communist-backed troops, South Africa decided it needed chemical and biological weapons. At the same time the anti- apartheid movement began effectively mobilizing mass protests. "The ANC had decided to take the war to higher levels," said former South African military chief Constand Viljoen outside the courtroom in Pretoria last Friday. "I put to our scientists to find substances that would make unruly crowds friendly. We also had received intelligence from Angola of a real danger of gas warfare. We needed research to make sure that South Africa was on equal footing. We were under boycott and didn't have information from other countries."

In 1983, Basson was put in charge of the army's Roodeplaat Research Laboratories and began a clandestine research effort called Project Coast. According to testimony before South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission last year, his team studied the use of illegal drugs like Ecstasy, THC and LSD for crowd control. They grew strains of anthrax, cholera and botulinum. According to the indictment, they produced covert assassination tools, including a syringe disguised as a screwdriver and a gun that fires poisoned pellets, disguised as an umbrella. Basson allegedly drew up plans to distribute T shirts poisoned with euphoria-producing drugs in black townships and to incapacitate the jailed ANC leader Nelson Mandela by lacing his medicine with the heavy metal thallium. The lab turned out poisoned beer, chocolate, cigarettes and envelope flaps.

Hit-team members are expected to describe trying out some of the gear. A plan to assassinate two exiled ANC leaders by injecting them with poison from a syringe-screwdriver in the London Underground flopped when the agent panicked and threw the device into the Thames. Another case revealed that agents allegedly opened the suitcase of a leading antiapartheid cleric and dusted his underwear with poison. He fell gravely ill but sought medical attention in the United States and survived. All three now are top South African officials. But the indictment lists more than 200 murder victims, most of them Namibian guerrillas allegedly killed in captivity with muscle relaxants or poisoned soft drinks.

Mandela disbanded the unit after taking power in 1993, but kept Basson on the staff of a government hospital. Government investigators began accumulating the 12 trunks full of evidence they will present in court. Far from producing cutting-edge research, investigators claim, the doctor took the apartheid government for a massive ride, pocketing much of the nearly $12 million he received for his far-flung research. Some analysts claim that the CIA secretly cooperated with Basson but finally set him up when he prepared to flee the country two years ago. In a final twist, he was arrested after allegedly trying to sell Ecstasy tablets to South African undercover agents. Basson denies any wrongdoing. "I did many things, but not one of them was illegal and not one of them led to the death or bodily harm of a single person," he told the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. He added: "The U.S. and Britain do all these things on a daily basis. Whatever we did is peanuts by comparison." Soon he can tell it to the judge.

With Vera Haller in Pretoria

Newsweek International, October 18, 1999

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