Janet Phelan
In a last minute strategic move by counsel, Dr. Wouter Basson’s sentencing by the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA) has again been delayed.
Basson, who was found guilty by the HPCSA in 2013 of acting unprofessionally as the director of the apartheid government’s biological and chemical warfare unit, Project Coast, may have had one of the longest running trials in history. The initial complaints against him were filed with the medical board in 2000, only to be delayed until the conclusion of his criminal trial in Pretoria High Court.
As director of Project Coast in the eighties and early nineties, Basson allegedly provided assassination chemicals to members of the South African Defence Force, and, according to testimony heard in the criminal case, was involved in 229 murders. In addition, he was charged with embezzlement, drug trafficking and possession of illegal drugs. When he was arrested in 1997, he had more than 1000 Ecstasy tablets in his possession.
“No records are available to confirm that the biological agents were destroyed.”
Daniel Taylor
Operating out of South Africa during the apartheid era in the early 1980s, Dr. Wouter Basson launched a secret bioweapons project called Project Coast. The goal of the project was to develop biological and chemical agents that would either kill or sterilize the black population and assassinate political enemies. Among the agents developed were Marburg and Ebola viruses.
Basson is surrounded by cloak-and-dagger intrigue, as he told Pretoria High court in South Africa that “The local CIA agent in Pretoria threatened me with death on the sidewalk of the American Embassy in Schoeman Street.” According to a 2001 article in The New Yorker magazine,the American Embassy in Pretoria was “terribly concerned” that Basson would reveal deep connections between Project Coast and the United States.
Janet Phelan
Dr. Wouter Basson, whose work as head of the South African apartheid government’s biological and chemical warfare unit earned him the nickname “Dr. Death,” has again evaded sentencing.
Basson was first arrested in 1997, following the dissolution of the apartheid government. His much publicized trial in Pretoria High Court in the years 1999-2002 produced outcries of judicial bias by his prosecutors. With 200 witnesses against him, who testified to his involvement in multiple assassinations as well as fraud and embezzlement during his tenure as head of Project Coast, Dr. Basson was the sole witness in his defense. He was acquitted of all sixty seven charges against him. The legal contortions executed by the Judge Hartzenberg—all resulting in Basson’s acquittal—eventuated in the State moving to have the judge recused. Hartzenberg, however, refused to step down from the case.
