South Africa's Chemical and Biological Warfare Projects
South African prosecutors may get a second chance at prosecuting chemical and biological weapons expert Wouter Basson (March 10, 2004)
Prosecutors are trying to bend the rules to convict Basson, his lawyers argue. Read the Sapa report (November 5, 2003) Basson may escape a retrial even if prosecutors win their appeal against his aquittal in South Africa's highest court. Read the Sapa report (November 4, 2003)
Wouter Basson says Bush and Blair were deceived by Iraqi sources and has also slated the former head of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, as "un-Christian". Read the article (July 23, 2003)
Former SA Defence Force secret weapons specialist Wouter Basson has vowed to defend his innocence and fight for reinstatement in the army. Read Basson sets his sights on top army spot. (July 23, 2003)
If Wouter Basson is innocent as the court found after his two-year long trial then the question is: "Who is responsible for the many human rights abuses for which he stood accused?" Jacklyn Cock reviews Liza Key’s documentary on the man known as "Doctor Death". Read The Man Who Knows Too Much (June 20, 2003) See also Searching for Answers.
Wouter Basson wants a job in the South African National Defence Force and feels that, as the most senior general in the force, he could serve it "fruitfully over the next few years". Read Basson wants job back, apology from Tutu (June 6, 2003)
CrimeLibrary.com carries a reasonably accurate synopsis of the case of Dr Larry C Ford, a brilliant and outwardly respectable US doctor who was discovered to be involved in bioterrorism and have links with apartheid scientists
Wouter Basson claims Saddam Hussein was "hoodwinked by criminals" who delivered containers filled with sand when he tried to rebuild Iraq's arsenal. Read Criminals 'sent Iraq sand, not arms' (June 6, 2003)
The Supreme Court of Appeal has refused South African prosecutors a retrial for acquitted chemical and biological warfare expert Dr Wouter Basson. Read State appeal in Wouter Basson case falls flat (June 4, 2003)
State prosecutors have launched a legal challenge to Wouter Basson's acquittal last year. Read Court Takes State to Task
and Basson Attends Appeal Hearing (May 12, 2003) See Wouter Basson Retrial Could Not be Fair (May 14, 2003)
It reads like the plot for a spy novel. A secret project of agents acting covertly on behalf of the United States government to smuggle deadly biological warfare organisms out of South Africa to the US. Yet the events are real. Read the Mail & Guardian article Mission Implausible? (May 9, 2003)
SA scientist allegedly "tried to sell" the FBI a microbial Frankenstein that fused the genes of a common intestinal bug with DNA from apathogen causing deadly gas gangrene. Read Washington Post articles Lethal Legacy: Bioweapons for Sale (April 20, 2003) and Biotoxins Fall Into Private Hands, the global risk of S. Africa's poisons (April 21, 2003)
Details are emerging of the shadowy life of former South African Defence Force major-general Tai Minnaar who tried to sell biological weaponry designed by Wouter Basson. Read the Mail & Guardian report - SA General Touted Anthrax Abroad (January 24, 2003)
From Dr Death to Dr Stress - Dr Wouter Basson, former head of South Africa's chemical and biological weapons projects, re-invents himself as a motivational speaker. Read the article in The Herald (November 14, 2002)
Basson denies contact with Iraq, but says the US is vilifying "poor" Saddam Hussein. Read the article published in The Herald and Daily Dispatch (November 15, 2002)
Online Exclusive - Read the first chapter of "Secrets and Lies - Wouter Basson and South Africa's Chemical and Biological Weapons Programme," the incisive new book by journalist Marlene Burger and investigator Chandré Gould. Scroll down for more on the book.
"Basson was Project Coast. End of story. He was the boss and made the decisions. I don't think General Knobel was very well informed about what was going on. Basson is a very clever man. He is probably one of the most brilliant men I know." - Daniel Truter, former financial consultant to Project Coast
"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...The U.S. and Britain do all these things on a daily basis. Whatever we did is peanuts by comparison." - Dr Wouter Basson, head of Project Coast
Dr. Wouter Basson, a respected South African cardiologist, gained infamy in 1998 when he was revealed to have led a decade-long effort to develop chemical and biological weapons for the apartheid South Africa government.
The aims allegedly included developing bacteria that would kill only blacks, vaccines to make black women infertile. Basson maintains his innocence.
He went on trial in October 1999, the culmination of a six year investigation into Project Coast - South Africa's chemical and biological warfare programme.
The landmark case, which lasted 300 days and produced 30 000 pages of transcripts ended in April 2002 when he was acquitted on all 43 counts.They included18 charges of murder, conspiracy, assault and intimidation, 24 of theft and fraud involving close to R46 million (about $4-million) and three charges relating to the possession of Ecstasy. Prosecutors tried to appeal the judgment but lost in June 2003.
Basson's special duties in the South African Army began in the early 1980s. 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, 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 allegedly 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. Mandela disbanded the unit after taking power.
by Chandre Gould and Peter Folb
by Marlene Burger and Chandré Gould
Written by a veteran journalist and a former Truth Commission investigator this critical book tells the fascinating and sordid story of the man who became known as Doctor Death and the grey world of smoke and broken mirrors in which he moved.
managing officer of Project Coast,numerous interviews and other relevant documentation the book offers a meticulous account of South Africa ’s clandestine CBW programme.
Published by the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research, it makes a major contribution to our knowledge of the apartheid CBW
programme.
Read articles by Marlene Burger. Read an overview of the chemical and biological weapons programme by Chandré Gould and her analysis of how science was compromised by Project Coast.