JOHANNESBURG: Wouter Basson, one of South Africa’s most notorious apartheid era figures, is adamant he deserves to be reinstated in the military.

The former army general became known as “Dr Death” when details of the apartheid government’s chemical and biological warfare programme came to light after the fall of apartheid in the late 1990s.

A little over a year ago he was acquitted in the Pretoria High Court on 46 criminal charges ranging from murder to theft and fraud relating to his tenure as the head of Project Coast in the 12 years to 1992.

Speaking about being fired from the military along with 23 other generals by former South African President Frederik Willem de Klerk in 1992, Basson said: “I want to know what happened,” The Star newspaper reported.

The 51-year-old heart surgeon and espionage expert was arrested on charges of dealing in drugs in 1997 and subsequently charged with 61 criminal counts in total.

During a high-profile six-year trial that centred on the state’s contention that Basson had used Project Coast as an offensive programme to crush apartheid opponents, the charges were eventually reduced to 46.

The state alleged he had amassed a personal fortune while supplying apartheid agents and operatives with James Bond-style gadgets, lethal toxins and drugs.

He was also fingered in a plot to kill Nelson Mandela in the 1980s, accused of supervising scientific research into drugs to manipulate the fertility of black women and a plan to release the AIDS virus among black people.—dpa