Apartheid-Era Officer Tells of Killing Prisoners

A former special forces officer Thursday described killing hundreds of black prisoners and tossing their bodies from an airplane, in testimony that shed light on the horrors of South Africa’s apartheid-era regime.

Johan Theron’s testimony for the first time crystallized the events of two decades ago. Sketchy reports had surfaced earlier of the killings of about 200 members of a guerrilla group that fought South Africa’s occupation of neighboring Namibia, known as South-West Africa until it won independence in 1990.

The killings began with strangulations but evolved into more sophisticated poisonings, with the bodies dropped into the Atlantic, Theron told the Pretoria High Court.

Most had been killed by an overdose of muscle relaxants, supplied by Dr. Wouter Basson, who ran apartheid South Africa’s chemical and biological weapons program, Theron said. Theron, a former lieutenant colonel, was testifying Thursday as a prosecution witness in Basson’s murder, conspiracy and fraud trial.

Theron said he and the commander of South Africa’s special forces at the time, Gen. Fritz Loots, had decided that there were too many South-West Africa People’s Organization rebels in prison camps. South African paramilitary police began delivering prisoners to him for execution in 1979, Theron said.