South Africa: when "Doctor La Mort" resurfaces
(2012 archive) Wouter Basson appears before the College of Physicians in South Africa.
YOAV LEMMER
Text by: RFI Follow
3 min
It is outrage in South Africa.
Dr Wouter Basson, nicknamed "Dr La Mort", who worked for the apartheid regime, notably as head of a biological and chemical weapons program, is still working in two hospitals in the province of Western Cape.
Information that has been controversial all last week.
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The Mediclinic hospital group has tried to extricate itself from the controversy, claiming not to be responsible for Wouter Basson's authorization to practice.
"We can not prohibit doctors registered with the Council of the Order to practice .. unless the law prevents them", wrote the group on Twitter ... An explanation that did not convince.
Indignant messages have multiplied on social networks.
Your brought Dr Death back, #MediClinicMustFall
- Black Economic Transformation (@KgomotsRamotlou) January 19, 2021
Because the 70-year-old cardiologist, former personal doctor of
Pieter Botha
, head of state during apartheid, was the prime contractor for a project for the development of chemical and biological weapons for the secret services.
Called
"
Project Coast
"
, this program targeted opponents of the regime.
Example of research: a vaccine to try to sterilize black women, anthrax cigarettes or even venoms and poisons hidden in various everyday objects. Project Coast also covered a vast drug trafficking ...
In 2013, the Council of the Order of Physicians had found him guilty of violating the code of ethics after a very long investigation (opened in 2007), without removing him from the profession ...
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To read also
: in South Africa: the "Doctor Death" in front of the order of the doctors
After the fall of the apartheid regime, Wouter Basson refused to cooperate with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, set up to identify the crimes of this segregationist apartheid regime, and allow reconciliation between the executioners and their victims.
Even in exchange for political amnesty.
It was this commission which revealed to the general public the existence of the secret program "
Project Coast
".
In April 2002,
the South African justice had already acquitted him
of 46 charges, at the end of a river trial of two and a half years during which hundreds of witnesses had nevertheless marched to tell the poisons that "
Project Coast
'attempted to develop to specifically kill black people
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