the rollback of south africa's biological warfare program

faced a number of obstacles in marshalling the evidence needed to prove that
these actions constituted criminal acts. First, the prosecution had to obtain
permission and funding from their government to undertake international
investigations. Next, the prosecution had to win permission from federal and
state authorities in the United States before they were able to examine relevant
documents related to Basson’s transactions that were held by his American
auditor, David Webster. They then had to attempt to penetrate a web of
complex dealings, since Webster, not Basson, was the Chief Executive of
many of Basson’s international holding corporations. Recently, the trial had to
travel to Jacksonville, Florida in order to obtain the sworn statements of
Americans they believe helped Basson to defraud the government because
these foreign nationals had refused to return to South Africa voluntarily to
testify.
The prosecution also had to send process servers to Canada to subpoena
two former doctors who had worked on Project Coast in order to force them to
appear in court. They, like many other doctors, scientists and former Special
Forces officers with knowledge about Project Coast, had already emigrated
from South Africa. In other cases, potential witnesses were never located.
Even in cases where key South African witnesses were still living in the
country, the prosecution frequently had to promise legal immunity in order to
gain full cooperation as States’ witnesses.
The area that gave the prosecution the most difficulty was uncovering
evidence related to the large number of illegal drugs that were produced under
the auspices of Project Coast and subsequently sold on the black market.
During the third week of the Basson trial, South Africa Narcotics Bureau
officers involved in the sting operation that led to Basson’s arrest in January
1997 testified that before the deals involving Basson they had never
encountered Ecstasy capsules in South Africa. A pharmacist recruited to work
at Delta G after his military service, Steven Buekes, told the Court that Basson
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