A DOCTOR who served under Dr Wouter Basson testified in the Pretoria High Court on Tuesday that the apartheid chemical warfare expert injected a suspected African National Congress (ANC) member during an interrogation.
Basson has denied using chemicals during an interrogation.
However Dr Phil Meyer, who was in charge of the casualty department at 1 Military Hospital in the 1980s, told the court on Tuesday that Basson and another colleague, Dr Deon Erasmus, had questioned the man at length after injecting him.
Meyer, who later became chief of Unita’s medical services, said the hospital contained a “sensitive” ward where the Angolan rebel movement’s members and other foreign patients were treated. Access to the ward was restricted.
Meyer, who said he underwent training in conventional interrogation, said that in August or September 1985 he was ordered to accompany Basson and Erasmus to the ward where they found a black man on a drip.
He was told that the patient had ANC connections and would be interrogated to establish who he was.
Either Basson or Erasmus injected a substance into the drip and one of them then interrogated the patient, but without results. The interrogation lasted for about an hour, during which the patient became drowsy.
Basson, Erasmus and Meyer returned the next day to question the man again. Again, they had no luck. According to Meyer, none of them wore surgical masks, and their faces were clearly visible.
At one point during the interrogation, there was a discussion during which was mentioned that the patient would have to be “taken out” because he could identify them, or inform others of their methods.
Meyer never saw or heard of the patient again.
He told the court he had religious objections to the activities and took his concerns to the soon-to-be Surgeon General Niel Knobel. He was shortly thereafter transferred to another section of the SA Defence Force.
Basson has denied guilt on 61 charges ranging from murder to attempted murder, fraud and drug trafficking.