Special Hearings — Chemical And Biological Warfare Hearings — 1998-06-08

JAN LOURENS: That would have - a specification per se was never given to me, neither Dr Immelman, Davies or Dr Basson would give me a special request or a specific specification.  You know, it would often be a very loose discussion, they may have evaluated a piece of equipment and said, look, it works well, but perhaps we could look at something else that could shoot the little ball over three metres, or whatever the case may be, but my contact in terms of the manufacture thereof came from Dr Basson.

MR VALLY: So would Dr Basson give you the specific specifications?

JAN LOURENS: He never gave me specific directions, you know, it would be a discussion, he wouldn't tell me give me an umbrella that can shoot a ball three and a half metres at 400 metres per second, no, that he would never do, and he never did.

MR VALLY: I want to move on to another item, which is the issue of the investigation into a possible chemical attack in Mozambique in 1992.  Can you just tell us about this, who brought you into the investigation, and what the investigation did in fact do?

JAN LOURENS: I was contacted by Dr Basson.  He instructed me that I was to be contacted in due course by Dr Brian Davies, and that we at Protechnic, at this stage I'd left SRD and I'd worked at Protechnic, running Protechnic on the Chemical Defence Programme, that I would be contacted by Dr Davies and we needed to investigate an alleged incident of a the application of a chemical warfare substance in Mozambique.  We at that stage had developed ...(intervention)

MR VALLY: Let's just understand this, the application of a chemical warfare substance Mozambique, can you spell this out for us, please?

JAN LOURENS: Well, we didn't know.  We were told that there is an allegation, that there was some sort of chemical substance applied to people in Mozambique and ...(intervention)

MR VALLY: The chemical attack?

JAN LOURENS: Yes, well, it wasn't, you know it was not stated as an attack, there was a chemical incident.  A chemical incident didn't refer to a situation of ...(indistinct) of a hazardous chemical, in other words, it wasn't an industrial incident, it was a military type of incident, but we didn't have the detail.  It was never told to us that it's ...(indistinct)  and applied mustard gas on a civilian population.  We were just told there's an incident, were going to have to do a verification on this incident.

MR VALLY: Go on, please.

JAN LOURENS: We had at that stage done a lot of work on verification in terms of what you basically do, is you investigate the particular chemical substance, let's say it's mustard gas, bad example, let's say it's nerve gas, so you would investigate nerve gas and say, okay, if nerve gas had been applied, what would it break down to.  So you wouldn't look necessarily for nerve gas, you may look for breakdown products, you may look for sweat and tell tale signs of particular chemical substances, and we developed collection procedures, we collected, we developed protective systems to be able to go into areas to be able to verify the particular incident.  We set the team together, from the laboratory and it was - we were three or four from the laboratory, and it was, we were three or four from the labs and three or four colleagues from South African Medical Services, Seventh Medical Battalion Group.  We were then instructed to move into the Kruger National Park, into a specific camp and we had to wait, where we would have been met by Dr Davies.  We moved out equipment into the Kruger Park and waited at this particular camp for Dr Davies.  He arrived late afternoon, they flew in with a South African Air Force helicopter ...(intervention)

MR VALLY: Just so we don't get confused, this Dr Davies, who is this?

JAN LOURENS: Dr Brian Davies was the man, he worked at a - he's a medical doctor, he was working at a company called Lifestyle Management and he acted as a consultant for the South African Medical Services on biological and chemical warfare issues.

MR VALLY: Lifestyle Management, was that also a front company?

JAN LOURENS: It was also a front company, yes.

MR VALLY: And this is Brian Davies, as opposed to Mr James Davies.

JAN LOURENS: Yes, he's Brian Davies.

MR VALLY: Fine, sorry, please go on.

JAN LOURENS: And then Brian, they flew in by helicopter and Brian had with him, as far as I can recall three or four individuals from Mozambique.  These individuals were Government individuals, and they were there to accompany us on this verification exercise, to look for the site.  We slept the night, we got up the next morning and we early morning packed out and got ready for the verification exercise, and we moved out, we drove out into an area alongside the fence between the Kruger Park and the Mozambican Border.  We got into the helicopter, we flew a distance, we came back and that was it.  We went no further.  It was said at that stage, and there was difficulty communicating with the Portuguese speaking Mozambican individuals is that the site cannot be identified, the territory is sort of the same everywhere and we packed up and we went home, we had a cold drink and we went home, that was it.

MR VALLY: Was any report done?

JAN LOURENS: Apparently there had been a number of reports done.  I didn't see any of it, of the reports, but the South African team, we were not the only team, there was another team, I think from the UK, and another team from either France or the Netherlands, that investigated the same incident.  Brian Davies definitely did generate a report, but I never saw the report, no.  We did not collect any substances, we didn't perform any science at that point.

MR VALLY: Did you determine what the chemical incident was after you went to the Kruger Park?

JAN LOURENS: No.  What happened there is that this is that you know, we were not fully briefed in terms of the incident, the apparent situation or discussion or allegation was that it was an aircraft that flew over from the South African territory into Mozambique, disposed of a substance and a variety of variations was explained here to, and a number of soldiers, by that time identified to be soldiers, was in actual fact killed.  The aircraft in itself, there was more than one story of what it was, one was that it was a remotely  piloted vehicle, the other was that it was a small aircraft, but in terms of the conclusive evidence conclusive, finalisation, I don't know, I was not made part of it.

MR VALLY: Do you have any knowledge of any chemical substance other than these screwdrivers, walking sticks, etc we're talking about, which were used on people?

JAN LOURENS: No, Mr Vally.

MR VALLY: At some stage, you left SRD.

JAN LOURENS: Yes, I left SRD and I then went to Protechnic and then I left, eventually I left Protechnic, yes.

MR VALLY: Are SRD and Protechnic separate companies?

JAN LOURENS: The chemical defence part of SRD became Protechnic and it grew into a full scale chemical defence facility, currently owned by Armscor.

MR VALLY: Was it also a front company?

JAN LOURENS: Yes.

MR VALLY: Protechnic?

JAN LOURENS: Well, it was a front company in the sense - no, let me rephrase that, it was a front - it didn't belong to Armscor and our shareholders were private, but the private shareholders were me, the company Sharburn(?) based in Luxembourg and Medchem, Medchem being the company that was run by Dr Philip Mijburgh then and Medchem was the holding company of Delta G, etc, etc.  So as far as the majority shareholder was concerned, it was still Medchem which was, as fare as I'm concerned, a front company.

MR VALLY: I see.  Sorry, where does Medchem fit in, I thought the holding company was Infladel?