'Plot to poison enemies of apartheid'

South Africa's former head of germ warfare during the apartheid era - dubbed Dr Death - will be told tomorrow if he has been convicted of plotting to exterminate political activists using a collection of bizarre poisons.

The list of Dr Wouter Basson's alleged crimes reads like a spy thriller. Pretoria's High Court has heard that as leader of the military's chemical and biological warfare programme, Project Coast, he invented a variety of macabre assassination methods, including poisoned cigarettes, poisoned vitamin pills, and even poisoned underpants.

Prominent anti-apartheid activist the Rev Frank Chikane - once Nelson Mandela's right-hand man - was expected to succumb to the underpants. They were impregnated with a toxin which would enter the bloodstream and cause clots, the court heard.

But Chikane unexpectedly visited America - and doctors there were able to save his life and identify the toxins.

Basson faces life imprisonment if found guilty, after a two-year trial, of 46 charges covering the project between 1982 and 1992, including more than a dozen murders.

Walking sticks concealed poison injectors, syringes were disguised as screwdrivers, and rings were made with hidden compartments for poison. "The most frequent instruction was for the development of a compound which would kill but make the cause of death appear to have been natural," said one scientist who worked on the programme.

Poisons used included anthrax, cyanide and thallium, which is colourless and odourless, causing an effect easily mistaken for a brain haemorrhage.

In 1987, Basson allegedly ordered the delivery of a poison-tipped umbrella to London. It was to be used to kill two senior members of the ANC.

But the operation took a farcical turn when the scientist who created the poison flew to London to demonstrate its application and nearly killed himself with it. The mission was abandoned.

Last year, a former government assassin, Johan Theron, told the court that Basson had supplied him with a muscle relaxant to kill hundreds of Namibian guerrilla fighters before their bodies were dumped from aircraft into the sea.

Basson denies responsibility for political assassinations carried out by agents using his creations and claims he was only following orders from senior government members.

The 52-year-old son of a police colonel and opera singer was conscripted into the army as a junior doctor, and became a brigadier, biologcial warfare specialist and spy. He told the court the white-run government had given him unlimited power and money to devise "defences" to possible chemical or germ attacks on South Africa.

Asked how he had become head of Project Coast, he told the court: "In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king."

Basson was sacked from the programme in 1992 when an investigation was launched into reports that operatives were involved in business deals with Libya.

But he was re-employed as a doctor by the Mandela government, which believed his reinstatement allowed the authorities to keep him under control and stop him fleeing with the country's secrets.

A Jekyll and Hyde character, his patients admired him as a saviour and to his colleagues he was a scientific genius.

However, five years later he was arrested for allegedly trying to sell 100,000 Ecstasy tablets. Basson has said he at first thought the gunmen approaching him were British agents out to silence him. The subsequent discovery of four cases of incriminating documents finally lifted the lid off Basson's activities and Project Coast.

His lawyer Jaap Cilliers said Basson was suspended from his job as a cardiologist at a Pretoria military hospital before his trial started in October 1999. But he remains free on bail.

Mr Cilliers said Basson was confident of acquittal. "Of course, you can never be absolutely sure, but we feel the case went well and we feel confident that the facts that came through will establish his innocence," he said.