Reconciliation for the Dead
Page 33
Soon after, Doctor Death was alleged to have orchestrated the killing of more than two hundred SWAPO prisoners using a lethal cocktail of muscle relaxants, clandestinely disposing of the bodies at sea. Over the course of the 1980s and early 1990s, allegations surfaced of Operation COAST’s involvement in the assassination of anti-apartheid activists, including members of the SADF, and of attacks using chemical weapons in South Africa and against FRELIMO troops inside Mozambique. At the same time, COAST began producing large quantities of non-lethal drugs such as ecstasy and mandrax, which they sold into target areas at significant profit. In 1996, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) began to investigate the activities of the SADF during the war, including Operation COAST. The international press picked up the story and gave it wide exposure. Partly due to pressure from the USA and Great Britain, Doctor Death was arrested in Pretoria in 1997. At the time, police found a thousand ecstasy tablets in his car, along with classified Operation COAST documents. Subsequent investigations suggested that he had been selling COAST’s chemical and biological weapons secrets to Libya and Iraq. In 1998 Doctor Death testified to the TRC. He refused to seek amnesty from the commission. The TRC concluded that he should be put on trial.
In October, 1999, Doctor Death was tried in Pretoria for two hundred and twenty-nine counts of murder and sixty-seven other charges including embezzlement, drug trafficking, fraud, conspiracy to murder, and theft. The trial lasted thirty months. During that time, the prosecution called one hundred and fifty-three witnesses. Doctor Death called only one – himself. He gave evidence for forty days. In April 2002, Judge Willie Hartzenberg dismissed all charges and granted the defendant amnesty, ruling that a South African court could not prosecute crimes committed in other countries. Doctor Death was released.
In 2003, the state tried to appeal the judgement, but the Supreme Court of Appeals ruled that there would be no retrial. In 2005, the Constitutional Court of South Africa overturned the Court of Appeal’s ruling, finding that a South African court could prosecute for crimes committed abroad. Since then, no further legal action has been taken by the state, and Doctor Death has travelled the world as a highly-paid guest speaker.
Between 1996 and 1998, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission considered seven thousand, one hundred and twelve applications for amnesty. Only eight hundred and forty-nine were granted.
The human genome was sequenced in 2000, proving definitively that attempts to create a genetically targeted ‘black bomb’ were always destined to fail. We are all the same.
Acknowledgments
This book owes much of its existence to my father, who instilled in me early a thirst for knowledge and travel. As a boy, our house was always filled with visitors and friends from abroad, including many South Africans fleeing apartheid. Sources of inspiration and details of the times and places in the book also came from 19 With A Bullet, by Granger Korff (30 Degrees South Publishers); Buffalo Battalion: South Africa’s 32 Battalion, A Tale of Sacrifice, by L.J. Bothma (Dr L.J. Bothma); and Under Our Skin: A South African Family’s Journey Through South Africa’s Darkest Years, by Donald McRae (Simon & Schuster). Thanks as always to my fabulous publisher Karen, my editor, James, my agent, Broo, to Heidi, Zac and Dec, my crazy sister Camilla, and to readers everywhere.
About the Author
Canadian by birth, Paul Hardisty has spent twenty-five years working all over the world as an engineer, hydrologist and environmental scientist. He has roughnecked on oil rigs in Texas, explored for gold in the Arctic, mapped geology in Eastern Turkey (where he was befriended by PKK rebels), and rehabilitated water wells in the wilds of Africa. He was in Ethiopia in 1991 as the Mengistu regime fell, and was bumped from one of the last flights out of Addis Ababa by bureaucrats and their families fleeing the rebels. In 1993 he survived a bomb blast in a café in Sana’a, and was one of the last Westerners out of Yemen before the outbreak of the 1994 civil war. Paul lived, worked and travelled throughout the Middle East and Africa for over a decade, including in Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt and Syria. The first two novels in the Claymore Straker series, The Abrupt Physics of Dying and The Evolution of Fear, received great critical acclaim and The Abrupt Physics of Dying was shortlisted for the CWA John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger. Paul is a sailor, a private pilot, keen outdoorsman, martial artist, and lives in Western Australia with his family.
Copyright
Orenda Books
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First published in the United Kingdom by Orenda Books 2017
Copyright © Paul E. Hardisty 2017
Paul E. Hardisty has asserted his moral right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the written permission of the publishers.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-910633-68-7
eISBN 978-1-910633-69-4
Typeset in Garamond by MacGuru Ltd
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.