JUDGE APPOINTED DURING APARTHEID CLEARS 'DR. DEATH'

PRETORIA, South Africa - A white judge appointed by South Africa's
apartheid government acquitted the former head of its chemical and
biological weapons program of 46 counts of murder, fraud and drug dealing
on Thursday.

Prosecutors, who had accused the judge of blatantly favoring the defendant
throughout the 2 1/2 -year trial, said they would appeal, and the ruling
African National Congress harshly condemned the judgment.

"It's outrageously bad, and it can't be the end of this case," ANC
spokesman Smuts Ngonyama said.

As the leaders of the apartheid government's shadowy chemical warfare
program, Dr. Wouter Basson, dubbed "Dr. Death" by the local media, was
accused of directing the former regime's horrifying and surreal efforts to
destroy its opponents.

The program, code-named Project Coast, tried to create deadly bacteria and
anti-fertility drugs that would only affect blacks, poisoned opponents'
clothing and stockpiled cholera, HIV and anthrax for use against "enemies,"
witnesses testified during the trial.

Basson, 51, also was accused of siphoning millions of dollars from Project
Coast to finance a lavish, globe-trotting lifestyle and of selling drugs.

He denied all the charges.

In summarizing his 1,500-page judgment, Pretoria High Court Judge Willie
Hartzenberg, who often ridiculed prosecutors and praised Basson during the
trial, said the government utterly failed to prove its case. The judge was
appointed by the former apartheid government.

As the verdict was read out in Afrikaans, Basson smiled and then hugged his
mother.

Apartheid-era Defense Minister Magnus Malan and former military chief
Constand Viljoen, who sat in the courtroom, praised the judgment.

"To come to such a logical conclusion, to me, proves that South African
courts are still good," Viljoen said.

Hartzenberg said he would hear prosecutors' appeal application April 29.

Witnesses at the trial said Project Coast laced sugar with salmonella,
cigarettes with anthrax and chocolate and beer with poison in efforts to
create more effective assassination tools.

The alleged targets included Nelson Mandela - who became president in the
nation's first post-apartheid government - and several ANC leaders who now
are high-ranking government officials.

The program also produced huge amounts of the drugs Ecstasy and Mandrax,
witnesses said.

In his testimony, Basson described heading the secret program as a romantic
life of international espionage leading him to clandestine meetings with
agents across the globe. He dismissed much of his more disturbing work as
simply a matter of following orders.

The trial produced 30,000 pages of evidence.

Revelations about Basson's program exploded in 1997, when he was arrested
for allegedly selling Ecstasy to a police informant and investigators
discovered documents about Project Coast.

Basson continued working as a cardiologist at a state hospital during the
trial until he was asked to resign last May. He suffered a stroke in
February, but appeared healthy while listening to the verdict.

Basson initially was charged with 67 counts, but Hartzenberg dismissed many
of them.

They included Basson allegedly conspiring to kill two apartheid opponents
in London with a poison-pellet firing umbrella and allegedly supplying
muscle relaxants used to kill more than 200 Namibian prisoners, whose
lifeless bodies then were dropped into the ocean from a plane. Shadrack
Gutto, a law professor in Johannesburg, said the verdict highlighted the
compromises made at the end of apartheid, leaving many civil servants and
judges in their posts even as a democratic government took power.