Basson's fancy footwork enchants court. (Around Africa - South Africa).

Arguments in the case against Dr Wouter Basson, alias "Dr Death" (see NA, Nov) resumed on 5 November and continued throughout the month and early December, with the state prosecutor, Dr Tone Pretorius, addressing the drug-related charges among the 46 Basson faces.

In a lengthy preamble, Pretorius warned the Pretoria High Court that Basson was a highly intelligent man and an "expert of deceit" who had been involved in several operations, including "hoodwinking whole nations".

"It had to be borne in mind," Pretorius said, "that Basson is an exceptionally intelligent and highly qualified individual. In addition to his impressive array of academic qualifications, he was responsible for drawing up the psychological profiles used by the South African Defence Force to select Special Forces recruits, and was acquainted with all the Special Forces operators during his time in the military. He is also a qualified explosives expert."

"Basson's military career," Pretorius continued, "included his involvement in highly sensitive and classified operations, numerous intelligence operations and the CBW [Chemical and Biological Warfare] project."

In short, said Pretorius, Basson was "a rare and particularly intelligent witness, an expert in several fields and as such, capable of offering plausible responses to any questions. Not only does he have an answer for everything, he has the ability to embroider on his responses with elaborate anecdotes".

Pretorius drew the court's attention to the fact that the keynote of the South African CBW programme, in which Basson played the leading role, was deceit. Front companies and cover stories were the order of the day, and plausible deniability the watchword.

The spin doctor

Basson's own testimony was riddled with such terms as "generate like crazy", "financial engineer", "manoeuvres" to create illusions, "pseudo-deals", "false documents", "manipulate the situation", "orchestrate events", "facades". Pretorius said the directors of the front companies set up by Basson "didn't have a clue" and fell for the cover stories "hook, line and sinker".

Basson had himself testified that: "The most valuable lesson they taught us in Special Forces was, if it is clear to you that your interrogator does not know what he is talking about, you can spin him any story you like.

"He can inject you, hit you, strangle you, but if the interrogator does not convince you within the first two minutes that he is already in possession of facts, all you have to do is play along. That's the way Special Forces work.

"The basic lesson that operators were taught is that they do not have to remain silent forever under interrogation. If captured, they have to refuse to give any information for the first 24 hours, to allow their comrades a chance to get away from the area. After that, they can tell their captors anything they like."

In the world of "smoke and mirrors" in which he moved, especially in the latter phase of Project Coast (the CBW project he headed), Basson himself acted as both information and disinformation officer.

From all indications, the prosecution has developed great respect for Basson's ability to withstand the most withering of cross-examinations.

For a conviction to be secured by the State according to South African law, Basson's answers to questioning with regard to each charge must NOT be "reasonably possibly true". In effect, the court should be able to safely dismiss his answers as lies.

But Basson's virtuoso performance was not lost on Judge Willie Hartzenberg who interrupted the State's presentation on numerous occasions.

"Clearly," said Judge Hartzenberg, "what the State expected was that the court should find that the accused is so intelligent, so accomplished at misleading everyone, that no matter how credible his version of events, it was a lie."

The State should bear in mind, continued the judge, that in the world of smoke and mirrors, nothing was as it seemed, and in order for the court to reject out of hand the bizarre versions furnished, there had to be seriously irrefutable evidence to the contrary.

With the damage having been done by the judge himself, the defence in response wisely rehashed what the judge had observed. It argued that the apartheid operatives who came to court to testify against Basson "framed" him to save their own skin.

However, the prosecution seemed to have better arguments in the fraud-related charges.

The chief prosecutor and award-winning lawyer, Anton Ackerman, argued that Basson under cross-examination had been playing it by the ear. He had set his sails to the wind, he said.

Basson's contention that he had formed a vast network of local and overseas companies on behalf of the Libyans, East Germans and Russians was fabricated. "No one on earth had ever been aware of them," Ackerman charged.

He argued that with the sheer weight of evidence produced by the State in the form of witnesses and numerous documents, Basson should have produced more than his own evidence.

Ackerman pointed out that Basson had used the CBW programme (in which he was the godfather), to enrich himself, and thus defrauded the State.

He said Basson had altered his role and interest in the WPW/Wisdom front company, when confronted with objective facts. The company had laundered huge amounts of cash.

In several interrogations before the trial by government agencies, Basson had tried to distance himself from the company. But when the prosecution proved that there was a huge flow of funds to Wisdom, Basson altered his story under cross-examination to read that Wisdom had been a supplier of equipment to Project Coast.

The reason is that "Basson was busy defrauding and robbing his employer, the State", said Ackerman. "He has so far seen to it that his version had a ring of truth in it and manipulated the facts to fir."

But the prosecution's frustration began long ago in the course of the two-year-old trial, and it has not been helped by Basson's fancy footwork around the State's case.

At some point, the prosecution even asked for Judge Hartzenberg to be changed, for being "biased" towards Basson. This was prompted by the manner in which the judge had intervened to slam some of the prosecution's finer points, and made rulings against it. But Hartzenberg refused to step down.

Ackerman has declared that the judge has already made up his mind with regard to the fraud-related charges, which is all music to the ears of Basson.

The arguments and judgement are expected to eat well into 2002. There is a lot more to come yet.