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

JAN LOURENS: No, no, at the time that I was exposed to this project, it was right at the start of the project, so, you know, delivery systems would have been a long way down the road.

MR VALLY: When were you aware of this project being initiated, I'm talking about the period, the date?

JAN LOURENS: If I - I'd have to say it was '86/'87 roughly.

MR VALLY: And how long did this project last, how long did it run for?

JAN LOURENS: I've not idea.  During the '86/'87 period I to a very large extent withdrew from the biological project.  At that stage Roodeplaat was on it's own feet, it was fully staffed, it had an own engineering department.  I still from time to time, even up till '91 supplied specialist equipment, but I wasn't involved in routine animal experimentation equipment at all.

MR VALLY: Did you provide equipment for routine animal experimentation prior to that period?

JAN LOURENS: Yes, I supplied them with a number of what is termed, a restraint chair.

MR VALLY: Can you just describe it for us, please?

JAN LOURENS: Basically a restrain chair is a chair in which an adult baboon would be strapped into so that experimentation can be done the baboon.  The baboon would sit in it and his arms and legs would be tied down.  It's a see-through perspex chair so that the baboon can be monitored as the baboon is experimented on.  What experimentation as such implies, means, I've never witnessed an experiment, so I've no idea.  I supplied them with a gas chamber, and what the gas chamber basically was, was a chamber that - it's a box if you want, again constructed from a see-through material, as far as I can recall it was polycarbonate, and it was of sufficient size that you could in actual fact move the restraint chair into this box and the box allowed you to introduce substances into this box by whatever means, and if I can define this a little bit more clearly, is that it had a septum, so you could inject through the septum, or you could spray a substance through the septum and it was self-contained, it had an air filtration system so that there would be minimal exposure to the outside, but you can expose the animal on the inside to whatever substance you wanted to.

MR VALLY: Who was this equipment, the restraint chair, the gas chamber, who were they supplied to, which structure or which company?

JAN LOURENS: To Roodeplaat Research Laboratory at - the biological lab.

MR VALLY: Experiments regarding biological agents, where were they carried out?

JAN LOURENS: I've absolutely no idea.  I would assume, speculation, it would have been Roodeplaat, and the only assumption, or the reason for the assumption would be since I installed a filter system at Roodeplaat, which - it's not totally true, I didn't install the system, I was party to the design and specification of the filter system to be able to remove chemical and biological substances, and I have to say to you removal of a biological substance is a reasonably simple procedure, chemical substance is more complex, but biological substance, or particle removal was part of that design, and there was facilities to be able to do that type of experimentation contained - decontaminate, etc, etc.

MR VALLY: Just then briefly, where was Delta G situated, where was the factory?

JAN LOURENS: In Midrand.

MR VALLY: Coming back to the gas chamber, who gave you the specifications in terms of which you built it?

JAN LOURENS: I interfaced, as far as these projects were concerned, with primarily only two people which and they - Dr Andre Immelman and Dr James Davies.

MR VALLY: What were their roles in either RRL or Delta G?

JAN LOURENS: They were both based at RRL and they were both toxicologists, so to a very large extent, especially James, James was responsible for the animal experimentation side.

MR VALLY: Now, to go on, did you move on from RRL at some stage?

JAN LOURENS: Yes, I was never in the employ of RRL, I moved on from Spes Ops to Delta G, I worked as a site engineer, and I from time to time as RRL required my services, I simply just did the work for them.  I moved on from Delta G at the end of the chemical site being completed. Once we'd gone into commissioning faze and the staff moved into the building, I had the option of staying on as a site engineer, or leaving, and at that stage I approached Dr Basson and requested that I be allowed to leave with a part of the project, and the part of the project was the part that looked at the chemical defence side.  Chemical defence side centred around material studies, engineering studies around the protection of man and of vehicles and systems, so it had to do with gas masks, special filters, special clothing, gas detection, etc, etc, which was a subject field that existed within the project, but which was at really an early stage of development and after a period of time between Dr Mijburgh and Dr Basson, they agreed thereto, and I left with that part of the project.  Now, if I say I left with the project, it was really just me and one scientist that left from Delta G, and we started this project from scratch.

MR VALLY: What was - did you form a company?

JAN LOURENS: Yes, I formed a company called Systems Research and Development.  We were based in Randburg and in this company I had three or four scientist and myself initially.

MR VALLY: Was this also a front company?

JAN LOURENS: Yes.

MR VALLY: Who was it financed by?

JAN LOURENS: It was financed by the South African Medical Services via Infladel and the system worked as follow, it's is that I would draft a series of project proposals in terms of, for example, the evaluation of textiles from Europe to be used in, to the manufacture of chemical warfare suits, do a formal scientific proposal, do the costing of this particular scientific proposal and then submit it to Dr Basson.  The project would be split into fazes, and as we complete a faze, submit a report, we would be paid for that particular part of the report, and it ran in that manner for a number of years.

MR VALLY: And who would you report to?

JAN LOURENS: I reported to Dr Basson, although I have to qualify this and say, Dr Basson was never involved in the day to day running of the project, or the month to month running of these projects, he was busy and had a lot of other things on his plate.  He in turn appointed a consultant to verify the scientific integrity of the projects and this consultant was again Dr Willie Basson.  Dr Willie Basson being the man that initially started Delta G.  He had left Delta G, he was working at Protea Chemicals at the time, so as far as the scientific integrity was concerned, I reported to him.

MR VALLY: You've mentioned some of the project proposals that were approved involved protective textiles.

JAN LOURENS: Yes.

MR VALLY: Can you tell us what else was involved, what else did you manufacture?