JOHANNESBURG - A court has acquitted the man known as apartheid's "Doctor Death," of 15 out of 61 charges, including a plot to murder a clergyman by impregnating his underpants with poison.
Pretoria High Court did not give reasons for Wouter Basson's partial acquittal because the case is continuing. But legalsources indicated that most charges had been dropped by agreement with the state prosecutor for lack of evidence.
Even though 13 murder charges remain among the 46 facing Basson, he looks increasingly likely to go down in history as more of a fraudster than as apartheid regime's answer to the Nazi's Dr Mengele.
Basson, a cardiologist who headed the chemical and biological warfare programme during white rule, is sometimes portrayed as more influential than the Judiciary because he may know secrets which even the present Government wishes to protect.
Among the charges dropped was a conspiracy to kill Dullah Omar, now Transport Minister, by tampering with his heart medication. Basson was also acquitted of trying to fatally poison the Rev Frank Chikane during a trip in the United States in 1989.
Chikane, who was saved when American doctors identified poison in his underwear, was prominent in the South African Council of Churches and is chief of staff in President Thabo Mbeki's office.
The 46 charges Basson still faces also include drug trafficking and 24 fraud charges.
Allegations still stand that he set up an international network of front companies used to launder state funds and that he supplied chemicals which were used in the 1980s to kill at least 200 members of the South West African People's Organisation (Swapo), which fought South Africa's occupation of Namibia. Former military scientists who testified in return for amnesty at Archbishop Desmond Tutu's Truth and Reconciliation Commission claimed Basson developed toxins and germs to kill enemies of apartheid and worked closely with experts in Britain and the US.
