Apartheid's 'doctor death' acquitted of plot to murder priest

THE "Doctor Death" of apartheid, Wouter Basson, moved a step closer to shedding his nickname yesterday when a South African court acquitted him of 15 out of 61 charges, including a plot to murder a priest by impregnating his underpants with poison.

The Pretoria High Court did not give reasons for the partial acquittal because the case is continuing. But legal sources indicated that most charges had been dropped by agreement with the state prosecutor for lack of evidence.

Even though 13 murder charges remain among the 46 Dr Basson faces, he looks increasingly likely to go down in history as more of a fraudster than as the apartheid regime's answer to Dr Joseph Mengele. Dr Basson, a cardiologist who headed the chemical and biological warfare programme during white rule, is sometimes portrayed as more influential than the judiciary because he may know secrets that even the present government wishes to protect.

Among the charges dropped yesterday was a conspiracy to kill Dullah Omar, now Transport minister, by tampering with his heart medication. Dr Basson was also acquitted of trying to poison the Reverend Frank Chikane during a trip to America in 1989. Mr Chikane, who was saved when American doctors identified poison in his underwear, was prominent in the South African Council of Churches and is currently chief of staff in President Thabo Mbeki's office.

The charges Dr Basson still faces include murder, drug trafficking and 24 fraud counts. He was cleared of trafficking 100,000 Mandrax tablets but will have to explain how he was caught dealing in ecstasy.

Allegations still stand that he set up a network of front companies used to launder state funds and that he supplied chemicals in the 1980s to kill at least 200 members of the South West African People's Organisation (Swapo), which fought South Africa's occupation of Namibia. The court heard earlier that the chemicals were muscle relaxants injected into the victims before they were dumped in the sea.

Charges relating to an alleged experiment in which a jelly-like substance was smeared on the bodies of three men at Dukuduku, in Natal, were dropped. But Dr Basson still faces a murder charge for their deaths.

Dr Basson, whose contract as a cardiologist at a Pretoria hospital was only recently terminated, has not testified in the case, already in its 18th month. He is due to take the stand when the case resumes on 23 July.

Former military scientists, who testified in return for amnesty at Archbishop Desmond Tutu's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, claimed Dr Basson developed toxins and germs to kill enemies of apartheid and that he worked closely with experts in Britain and America.

Others have claimed he was a fraudster who extracted millions of dollars for his own benefit from a regime possessed with an irrational fear of plots against it by blacks and communists.