=============================================
Mr Jow perhaps this might go some way in shedding
more light on your fears. I have always thought the same too,
especially after watching a documentary on a British TV channel
a couple of years ago about Dr Death.
Regards
Manneh
==========================================
South Africa learns the secrets of 'Dr Death'
Horrifying testimony at the trial of Wouter Basson reveals the use of an
array of James-Bond-style gadgets such as screwdrivers hiding hypodermic
needles and cigarettes laced with anthrax.
STEVEN SWINDELLS reports
O
NE of the most sinister cogs in South Africa's former covert death machine
has gone on trial, unearthing secrets horrifying even to a country coming to
terms with the better-known atrocities of apartheid.
Prosecutors say that South Africa's apartheid-era chemical warfare boss
Wouter Basson, nicknamed "Doctor Death", supplied toxins that killed
hundreds of enemies of the white regime over two decades.
To make their case, they have called former operatives -- some seeking
immunity from prosecution themselves -- who have testified about poisonings,
suffocations and other horrors.
Basson has pleaded not guilty to 61 charges of murder, fraud and drug
peddling. He faces life imprisonment if convicted.
Judging by the first major testimonies this month, disturbing light is going
to shine on some of the darkest secrets of the former minority-white regime.
Johan Theron, a former special forces assassin, told the court he had killed
"hundreds" of Pretoria's opponents, mainly captured fighters for the South
West African Peoples' Organisation (SWAPO) and leaders of the then banned
African National Congress (ANC), from 1979 to 1987.
Theron said he specialised in injecting victims with muscle relaxants
supplied by Basson that led to an agonising death by suffocation. He said he
dumped the naked bodies from aircraft into the sea off Namibia to hide his
crimes.
One victim was injected in the heart because his veins had collapsed. Others
were strangled in the back of aircraft before being dumped into the waters
off the Skeleton Coast, the court heard.
The military intelligence operative murdered South African army personnel
considered security risks by using spiked soft drinks and tea and others
were killed using hammers and injected with snake venom, according to court
testimony.
Other testimony described a bungled plot to use a poisoned umbrella to kill
Ronnie Kasrils, now minister of water and forestry, during his exile in
London in the 1980s.
Weapons attributed to Basson also included cigarettes laced with anthrax and
James-Bond-style gadgets such as screwdrivers hiding hypodermic needles.
For the ruling ANC, whose leaders and present day cabinet ministers were
allegedly targeted for assassination using toxins supplied by Basson, Doctor
Death does not deserve mercy.
Likened to Nazi Germany's Joseph Mengele, who subjected his victims to
gruesome medical "experiments", Basson is charged with trying to make germs
that would attack only blacks and developing substances to make blacks
infertile.
"Basson is a genocidal killer, a man beyond reproach. He must be put away
for life because we are dealing here with an animal that shows no remorse,"
said ANC spokesman Smuts Ngonyama.
Basson has been freed on bail. He works as a cardiologist at a Pretoria
hospital. Patients have told local newspapers what a good doctor he is.
The trial has also heard staggering tales of incompetence.
The so-called "Project Coast" dreamt up plans to supply poisoned beer to
black taxi drivers in the Eastern Cape.
Other schemes that were not carried out included sneaking into a human
rights' lawyer's bathroom to put poisoned razor blades onto his shaver.
Even more alarming testimony came from Petrus Botes, a former member of the
Civil Cooperation Bureau, a secret government organisation involved in
taking out the apartheid state's opponents.
Botes said he was ordered to contaminate drinking water supplies at refugee
camps near Windhoek with cholera and yellow fever in 1988 before Namibia's
first elections.
The plan was not carried out because the water was chlorinated.
-- Reuters, May 18 2000.
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