BRONWEN ROBERTS, Pretoria | Tuesday 9.25am
THE DEFENCE force acquired a machine that could permanently alter human aggression levels by tampering with the brain, the Pretoria High Court heard on Monday.
The claim was made at the murder, drug and fraud trial of scientist Wouter Basson — who headed the past regime’s biochemical warfare programme — by Basson’s lawyer Jaap Cilliers.
Cilliers said that researchers decided that the machine, apparently called a peptide synthesiser, was too risky to use, and exchanged it in 1992 or 1993 for raw material to make drugs, also to alter human brain functioning.
The trial has already heard how the defence force laboratories had manufactured massive quantities of drugs such as Mandrax and Ecstasy to pacify rioting crowds. Cilliers said that the apartheid government’s last president, FW de Klerk, knew and approved of the military’s drug stockpiles.
Cilliers told the court that Basson had bought raw materials to make drugs from the Croatian government in an operation with the Swiss secret service, which, he believed, would get “nuclear technology” out of the deal. Basson faces 61 charges relating to murder, attempted murder, drug dealing and defrauding his apartheid masters of millions of rands. He has pleaded not guilty to all the charges.
The cardiologist, who is on bail, has been dubbed “Doctor Death” for his role in the apartheid regime’s top-secret biological warfare programme, alleged to have developed toxins, germs, drugs and lethal implements to kill scores of anti-apartheid activists.
The trial opened last month and is expected to last about two years. — AFP