Pretoria - Mr Wouter Basson, the scientist who spearheaded apartheid South Africa's biochemical warfare programme, was charged yesterday with helping to kill more than 200 people for the racist regime during the 1980s.
Mr Basson's alleged victims included some 200 operatives of the South West African People's Organisation (SWAPO), the former Namibian liberation movement, according to the lengthy charge sheet handed to the Pretoria Magistrates' Court.
The state alleges that after Pretoria decided to kill captured SWAPO operatives, Mr Basson supplied state security operatives with muscle relaxants that were given to the men in huge doses, causing them to suffocate.