OWN CORRESPONDENT, Pretoria | Wednesday 5.40pm.
AN assassin for the former apartheid regime described on Wednesday how he strangled liberation activists on aircraft before dumping their bodies in the sea because a tranquilising dart provided by state scientist Wouter Basson did not work.
Johan Theron, a former military pilot, told the Pretoria High Court on Wednesday that Basson later devised lethal injections to kill countless captured Namibian independence guerrillas before they were pushed into the Atlantic Ocean, because the first victims put up a fight to the death.
“On our first flight, the thing did not work and the prisoner started struggling with me, realising that it was a situation of life or death. I put a plastic cuff around his neck and strangled him.”
“I thought he would die quickly, but it took a full fifteen minutes of kicking and wetting himself before he died. I undressed him to prevent any identification and also had to cut the cuff from his neck,” Theron told the court where Basson is facing 61 charges of fraud, murder, conspiracy to murder and drug-related offences.
“This was difficult, because it went in very deep. His body was thrown into the sea before we flew back.”
Theron said he strangled several members of the South West African People’s Organisation before complaining to Basson.
“It was unacceptable to me, but the next few prisoners were all killed with the cuff. There were about six of them and it took three flights to get rid of their bodies,” he said.
He said he asked Basson to devise “a more humane” way of killing the Swapo prisoners and the state physician, who has been dubbed Dr Death for his sinister work, gave him muscle relaxants which caused a person to suffocate.
But, Theron said, he struggled injecting the substances into the prisoners because some were in shock and their veins had collapsed. He again approached Basson, who showed him how to inject the substance in the main artery.
Theron said he later complained to Basson that the prisoners experienced “too much pain” and the doctor then suggested that they should first be anaesthetised before being injected.
He could not remember how many prisoners were killed in this manner, “but it must have been hundreds.” — AFP