Pubdate: Fri, 12 Apr 2002
Source: Register-Guard, The (OR)
Copyright: 2002 The Register-Guard
Contact:  http://www.registerguard.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/362
Author: Associated Press

JUDGE APPOINTED DURING APARTHEID CLEARS 'DR. DEATH'

PRETORIA, South Africa - A white judge appointed by South Africa's 
apartheid government acquitted the former head of its chemical and 
biological weapons program of 46 counts of murder, fraud and drug dealing 
on Thursday.

Prosecutors, who had accused the judge of blatantly favoring the defendant 
throughout the 2 1/2 -year trial, said they would appeal, and the ruling 
African National Congress harshly condemned the judgment.

"It's outrageously bad, and it can't be the end of this case," ANC 
spokesman Smuts Ngonyama said.

As the leaders of the apartheid government's shadowy chemical warfare 
program, Dr. Wouter Basson, dubbed "Dr. Death" by the local media, was 
accused of directing the former regime's horrifying and surreal efforts to 
destroy its opponents.

The program, code-named Project Coast, tried to create deadly bacteria and 
anti-fertility drugs that would only affect blacks, poisoned opponents' 
clothing and stockpiled cholera, HIV and anthrax for use against "enemies," 
witnesses testified during the trial.

Basson, 51, also was accused of siphoning millions of dollars from Project 
Coast to finance a lavish, globe-trotting lifestyle and of selling drugs.

He denied all the charges.

In summarizing his 1,500-page judgment, Pretoria High Court Judge Willie 
Hartzenberg, who often ridiculed prosecutors and praised Basson during the 
trial, said the government utterly failed to prove its case. The judge was 
appointed by the former apartheid government.

As the verdict was read out in Afrikaans, Basson smiled and then hugged his 
mother.

Apartheid-era Defense Minister Magnus Malan and former military chief 
Constand Viljoen, who sat in the courtroom, praised the judgment.

"To come to such a logical conclusion, to me, proves that South African 
courts are still good," Viljoen said.

Hartzenberg said he would hear prosecutors' appeal application April 29.

Witnesses at the trial said Project Coast laced sugar with salmonella, 
cigarettes with anthrax and chocolate and beer with poison in efforts to 
create more effective assassination tools.

The alleged targets included Nelson Mandela - who became president in the 
nation's first post-apartheid government - and several ANC leaders who now 
are high-ranking government officials.

The program also produced huge amounts of the drugs Ecstasy and Mandrax, 
witnesses said.

In his testimony, Basson described heading the secret program as a romantic 
life of international espionage leading him to clandestine meetings with 
agents across the globe. He dismissed much of his more disturbing work as 
simply a matter of following orders.

The trial produced 30,000 pages of evidence.

Revelations about Basson's program exploded in 1997, when he was arrested 
for allegedly selling Ecstasy to a police informant and investigators 
discovered documents about Project Coast.

Basson continued working as a cardiologist at a state hospital during the 
trial until he was asked to resign last May. He suffered a stroke in 
February, but appeared healthy while listening to the verdict.

Basson initially was charged with 67 counts, but Hartzenberg dismissed many 
of them.

They included Basson allegedly conspiring to kill two apartheid opponents 
in London with a poison-pellet firing umbrella and allegedly supplying 
muscle relaxants used to kill more than 200 Namibian prisoners, whose 
lifeless bodies then were dropped into the ocean from a plane. Shadrack 
Gutto, a law professor in Johannesburg, said the verdict highlighted the 
compromises made at the end of apartheid, leaving many civil servants and 
judges in their posts even as a democratic government took power.
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