Special Hearings — Chemical And Biological Warfare Hearings — 1998-06-11

LOTHAR NEETHLING: That's correct, yes.  General Nico Nieuwoudt. I was then asked to assist, if we could, in providing Dr Basson who had a firm with the name of Delta G, with substances which we could possibly use for the combating of unrest and crowd control with regards to the unrest that was prevailing in the country at that stage, and the philosophy which was already known to me, was that under certain circumstances one could provide or use sleeping drugs which could possibly decrease the anger of the crowds so that the principle of minimum violence could be used maximally.  Minister le Grange, and I'm saying this - I'm now talking about people who have already died, and I'm very sorry for that, Minister le Grange and General Nieuwoudt I think were two wonderful people who gave me the impression that under no circumstances would they associate themselves with violence and we tried to do everything in our ability, and in the South African Police to do that as well, and I can prove this with numerous examples.  We had conferences, symposiums and travelled throughout the world and attended these in an attempt to develop techniques which would be more acceptable to the South African Police that a bullet from a gun, and we succeeded in doing this.  And in creating a series of products with regard to the application of teargas, water canons, sneezing machines, teargas from grenades, which was mor effective that the old grenades, and at the same time, we always tried to get a better teargas, and there was not a single one that was prescribed to us, and this a gas by the name of CR.  That day I was told that the ability that was developed, it was in the process of being developed, would be able to synthesise both the CR and CS gas.
 It is so that I was then informed and that Dr Basson showed me plans of a laboratory.  He also asked me some questions with regard to improvements which could have been made.  I gave him my input in that regard, and I was told that the capability would exist to make CR and CS.  That was the first thing.
 The second thing was to develop a possible smoke which would be able to influence the state of mind of the crowds, and three substances were listed which they knew they could obtain from me because it was publicly known that the drugs that we confiscated in the course of normal criminal procedure all ended up at the criminal forensic laboratory after the cases has been completed, because we - after we had heard that people were pushing it back onto the street again after the court cases had been finished, then one has to go after the same things twice, and we then said that we would store in centrally, which we did and of those tablets on three occasions methaqualone tablets were given to Dr Basson so that he could extract the active ingredient, mandrax, and use it for further synthesis to obtain substances which would be physiologically active.  In other words, we were looking for sleeping drugs, that was the one component, namely methaqualone, the second component was lysergic acid ...(intervention)

MR VALLY: Sorry, is that LSD?

LOTHAR NEETHLING: Yes, that's the active ingredient in LSD.  It comes from a whole conglomeration of tablets that was available.  They are light-sensitive and there was nothing more that approximately 50mg of active ingredient present in those tablets because one tablet usually is 50 micrograms.  This was the sum total.   And the third possible category was the changing dagga into powder form.  This could have been possibly changed into a gas formulation so that we could throw it into the air and instead of throwing stones and using vehicles for arson, that you did not want to do this anymore and you then become more peaceful.  And for that a conscript was used who worked with me for approximately nine months.  There were many conscripts who came to me as scientists ...(intervention)

MR VALLY: Sorry, would you give us his name please?

LOTHAR NEETHLING: His name was Sotas, Dr Sotas.  He came to me and we gave him the capability to take fresh dagga plants and to extract them and take the dagga oil out of it, and with that he went forth in the hope that they could make grenades or products which could be broken down into powder.  The same principle therefore as the previous two.   That was a once off occasion, that of Dr Sotas.
 The methaqualone mandrax, I think it was three times that this happened, each time this was done on request.  The procedure was as follows, the Surgeon-General, Dr Nieuwoudt would phone me and asked whether I could help Wouter.  Wouter would come to me, then Wouter would come and he'd say, I want so many mandrax tablets, and I'd say how many, 15 0000 or 10 000, whatever I had at stage, he would take it and leave, and I knew that they were trying to make derivatives and also to put this into the grenades.  This was a project that I was kept informed of, but grenades were never produced, which, let us say, were used operationally.  It was always just on an experimental or testing basis.  
 The only grenades which were produced a bit later, on an operational basis, were those the teargas CR.  These tear-gases, we tried to make in the late 70's without any awareness from my side that there would be possible interest from the Defence Force.  We asked that Sasol would, with its laboratory Sentrachem would make us a few kilograms of the substance, and they gave me 10 kilograms of wastage materials, because they had problems in manufacturing this, the people who were working with this had to wear wetsuits, etc to protect themselves, but we started using this, or tested this in aerosol cans and ...(intervention)

MR VALLY: Sorry, Gen Neethling, let's come back to the CR gas in a short while.

LOTHAR NEETHLING: Yes, okay.

MR VALLY: We're still at the point where you said that drugs which were confiscated were sent to the Police laboratories under your control and ...(intervention)

LOTHAR NEETHLING: Under the control of the laboratory, yes.

MR VALLY: Which you were the head of at the time?

LOTHAR NEETHLING: That's correct.

MR VALLY: And you were instructed or requested by the then Minister, Mr Louis le Grange, Minister of Law and Order or Police at the time, with the Surgeon-General, Dr Nieuwoudt, present as well as the them Commissioner of Police, Mr Coetzee?

LOTHAR NEETHLING: That's correct.

MR VALLY: To assist Dr Basson?

LOTHAR NEETHLING: Yes, that's correct.

MR VALLY: And to provide him with whatever he needed?

LOTHAR NEETHLING: To give him the specific methaqualone, ...(indistinct) and LSD, just those three things, nothing more, nothing less.  There could have been many other things, he could have asked for Dystopian, which we literally had tons of, all these valiums, libriums, etc that are abused.  They didn't want that, all they were interested in were these three things.

MR VALLY: So in lay person's terms, Mr la Grange, in the presence of the Commissioner, Mr - I forget his rank at the time, General Coetzee ...(intervention)

LOTHAR NEETHLING: Full General, he was the Commissioner.

MR VALLY: And ...(intervention)

LOTHAR NEETHLING: Lieutenant-General Nico Nieuwoudt, Surgeon-General.  In the meeting would also have been General Viljoen, but they told me General Viljoen could unfortunately not be present, as something had come up.  He was supposed to have been there, but he wasn't.

MR VALLY: And General Viljoen, what was his position at the time?

LOTHAR NEETHLING: He was the Head of the Defence Force.

MR VALLY: So the Defence Force was the - did he send someone in his place?

LOTHAR NEETHLING: No, it was only those three persons and I.

MR VALLY: So they advised you to supply Dr Wouter Basson with mandrax, LSD and dagga?

LOTHAR NEETHLING: That's correct, yes.

MR VALLY: Alright, let's go on from there, you mentioned that you supplied him with mandrax on three occasions to your knowledge?