Chris Oppermann
THE Transvaal attorney general’s office has made a major breakthrough in the case against Dr Wouter Basson, leader of the former South African Defence Force’s (SADF) chemical warfare project.
Dr Johan Koekemoer, former research manager at the covert SADF factory, Delta-G Scientific, has turned state witness and will give evidence against Basson.
This will, investigators in the attorney general’s office believe, aid their long- term task of determining the exact volume of dangerous drugs -such as Mandrax – that were manufactured at the factory, why the SADF needed them and where they ultimately landed up.
The investigators have information that some of the drugs were – for reasons still unknown – dumped in the sea, but that others were concealed in the nose-cone of an airforce jet which frequently flew abroad on top-secret missions. One such flight was to Britain, and also on board was a group of rugby enthusiasts who went to the first test between the Springboks and England in 1992 after sporting ties had been re-established.
Koekemoer was arrested in possession of the designer drug Ecstasy in January and was to be charged with Basson, in the first instance in a drugs trial.
Basson was to appear in court in Pretoria on Friday in connection with allegations that he tried to sell 1 000 Ecstasy tablets during a police sting operation.
But the trial, although important for the contribution it could make to understanding how taxpayers’ money was allegedly used in the manufacture of illegal drugs, is incidental to the main goal in the sights of investigators in the Transvaal attorney general’s office.
This goal is to pin down some of the most enduring mysteries of covert operations and crimes committed by the military during the apartheid era, in particular the chemical and biological warfare programme codenamed Project Coast.
During his bail application, after being caught allegedly selling Ecstasy, Basson was described by the prosecutor as the “root of the evil”.
Koekemoer was recruited in May 1986 to work as a researcher at Delta-G. The last time he allegedly had dealings with Basson was in 1993. He has said, in a recent interview in the presence of his lawyer, that he received instructions in the early 1990s from one of his seniors to manufacture 1 000kg of Ecstasy crystals.
Another breakthrough for the investigators has been the co-operation of a former senior procurement official for Delta-G who worked for the company for eight years.
The official kept a careful diary of all products and raw materials entering the facility. The employee also had several business dealings with Thor Chemicals executive Alan Kidger, who was brutally murdered.
“I had an unofficial business deal with Kidger two weeks before his death,” the former employee said recently. “I ordered two and a half tons of mercuric oxide from him … A colleague of mine at Delta-G fetched the oxide from Thor’s plant on the East Rand and paid them in cash.”
He described Delta-G as “state-of-the-art” research laboratories consisting of five different facilities. The official product was teargas for the security forces and everything else was “top secret”.
Only the researchers working on the projects knew what they were doing.
“We worked in cell structures on a need-to- know basis and nobody really knew what the other was doing,” the official said.
The former commander of the Brixton murder and robbery squad, Charlie Landman, confiscated all the diaries when he was investigating the so-called “red mercury murders”.
The diaries were recently handed over to the prosecutor in the Basson case, Dr Toerie Pretorius.
The investigators are also hopeful that a former military intelligence agent, Rich Verster, who is awaiting trial in Britain on drug-smuggling charges together with a well-known Port Elizabeth businessman, Michau Huisamen, may shed some light on the SADF’s covert drug-manufacturing project.
Verster indicated last week that he was ready to talk to Transvaal Attorney General Jan D’Oliveira’s investigators to strike a deal.
Verster and Huisamen are charged with smuggling 171kg of compressed dagga into the UK on board Huisamen’s private jet.
In his bail application, Verster claimed that he had previously been employed by the directorate of covert collection within the department of military intelligence to smuggle drugs-for-arms from South Africa.
Investigators are trying to unmask all the activities and funding of Delta-G Scientific, as well as the operational and financial affairs of the Roodeplaat Research Laboratories, RSL and several other SADF front companies which formed part of Project Coast.
Animal rights groups say that at the Roodeplaat laboratory near Pretoria, gases were tested on live animals – often young baboons who were housed in cages built so that researchers could watch how the poison spread.
One animal rights group warned earlier this week that it planned to protest outside Friday’s court hearing. One of their posters was to carry a picture of Basson on one side and a baboon on the other, with the words “agony and ecstasy” above the pictures.
The SADF’s counter-intelligence began investigating Basson in the early 1990s after several security leaks. The agents probed intelligence reports that Project Coast operatives were involved in business deals with the Libyan leader, Moammar Gadaffi. As a result of the leaks the name of the operation was changed to Project B and later to Project Iota.
Other front companies believed to have been connected to the covert operation are Roodeplaat Teelondernemings, Protechnik Laboratories, Lifestyle Management, Medchem, Technotek, Sevmed, Intramex and Hitech Lasers.
All these companies are being scrutinised by the office of serious economic offences which is trying to trace millions of rands which, it is believed, are hidden in foreign banks.