Truth of apartheid activities will come out in court, MD says

Saskatchewan physician to testify at trial of his former S. African army boss, who led a secret germ-warfare program

MARLENE BURGER

Special to The Globe and Mail; With reports from AFP and John Saunders in Toronto

Wednesday, October 6, 1999

Pretoria -- A former South African army doctor now practicing in Saskatchewan says the truth about allegations that he killed blacks during the apartheid years will come out at a South African trial at which he is scheduled to testify.

Jacobus Bothma, a 44-year-old orthopedic surgeon, has been implicated in the drug-assisted interrogation of prisoners and the murders of three men by an apartheid-era hit squad, according to the allegations in the indictment filed against his former military boss, Dr. Wouter Basson.

Dr. Bothma does not face any formal charges and is scheduled to testify against Dr. Basson, South Africa's so-called Dr. Death, whose trial began this week in Pretoria.

Dr. Bothma, who emigrated to Canada in 1994, told a Saskatoon newspaper this week that the truth about his role would come out at that trial.

"Maybe it'll be an eye-opener to people," he was quoted as saying. "These things will come out in the court case. They were the war years; things happened.

"It's a terrible thing for me to live through; people think that you're evil and that kind of stuff," he added. "I wish I could state the events as they happened and so on, but I cannot because what I'm going to say, I'm going to have to say in court in South Africa."

Dr. Basson, a cardiologist, faces 67 charges ranging from massive fraud and murder to drug dealing. He headed a secret chemical and germ warfare program in the late years of the apartheid regime.

In the almost 300-page indictment against Dr. Basson, Dr. Bothma's name appears repeatedly. According to the document, their relationship began in 1983, when Dr. Basson, then a lieutenant-colonel in South Africa's special forces, approached Dr. Bothma while he was working as working in Pretoria's 1 Military Hospital.

Dr. Bothma was told that "certain people" had to be eliminated, that the order had come "from higher up," and that experiments were to be carried out on them before they were killed, the document says.

His first task allegedly involved three unidentified black men who were driven hundreds of kilometres to a remote forest area before being handcuffed and tied to a tree overnight. (The original indictment referred to five men; the number was reduced to three in a revised version issued when the trial began on Monday.)

The next morning, the indictment says, Dr. Bothma smeared the men's bodies with a jelly-like substance provided by Dr. Basson and observed the results. The document does not make it clear whether the jelly was intended to kill the men, but it did not. They were then injected with a lethal concoction of potent muscle relaxants and an anesthetic. Their bodies were loaded on a light aircraft and, with Dr. Bothma aboard, flown about 60 kilometres out over the Indian Ocean before being dumped in the sea, the document says.

The indictment also mentions Dr. Bothma in a case of assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm in 1983. It says that he, Dr. Basson and Dr. Philip Mijburgh, a nephew of former South African defence minister General Magnus Malan, conducted a lengthy interrogation, using chemical substances, of a number of Mozambican rebels.

Dr. Basson's trial is expected to take up to three years, and more than 150 witnesses are scheduled.

Many of the charges relate to his role as head of the top-secret Project Coast, ostensibly a bid by South African officials to defend the country against chemical attack. The indictment alleges that, under cover of efforts to acquire a defensive capability, he and members of a covert unit, the Civil Co-operation Bureau, were responsible for the slaughter of more than 200 "enemies of the state" by means of lethal toxins manufactured by front companies acting for the military and funded by taxpayers.

Dr. Basson is also accused of siphoning millions of dollars for personal gain by means of false invoicing, secreting a fortune in secret bank accounts in the United States, England, Luxembourg, Switzerland and the Cayman Islands.

Dr. Bothma -- known as Jack in Canada and Cobus in South Africa -- is described in the indictment as an expert in the use of chemical substances to extract information and a member of a group of doctors who acted as the special forces' interrogation team.

Although he is seen as a key witness, he is unlikely to testify in the next 18 months because the prosecution plans to deal first with drug and fraud charges.

Meanwhile, Dr. Bothma must close his Saskatchewan practice by Jan. 19. He had been working as an orthopedic surgeon at a North Battleford hospital under a special five-year licence requiring him to bill at general-practitioner rates, not specialist rates, while seeking Canadian accreditation. He failed the examinations three times; he got a final, six-month extension when his five years were up in August.

Dr. Deon Erasmus, now a general practitioner in Provost, Alta., was a member of Dr. Basson's 7 Medical Battalion, a unit of commando doctors who treated special-forces troops.

Both Dr. Erasmus and his wife, Antoinette, former librarian for Project Coast, are scheduled to give evidence during the trial.

Dr. Erasmus is not implicated in any of the human-rights abuses allegedly carried out in the name of national security.

Ends