Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.

My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds.

As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices.

What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars,

poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples.

If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds. Hello you're listening to the BBC World Service and now the Witness History

podcast with me Bob Howard. Today I'm taking you back to South Africa at the turn

of this century and the trial of a doctor nicknamed Doctor Death by

the country's media. Voter Basson ran a project which was alleged to have killed

hundreds of people during the apartheid regime through the use of biological and

chemical weapons.

Vota Basson was a young South African doctor working as a heart specialist when in

1979 he was recruited by the country's military to use his medical knowledge to set

up secret laboratories. They would be part of a program which went by the seemingly innocuous

title of Project Coast. Dr. Marjorie Jobson is the National Director of Kulamani, a group which campaigns for justice on behalf of victims of apartheid.

Votubas son was appointed as the chief project officer.

He had hunted young doctors who were brilliant who served the military in the capacity of

doctors which you had to do for two years.

Dr Schacht-Bienso Van Wrenz, worked on Project Coast and later testified to the country's

Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a body set up to try and heal the country over crimes committed

during the apartheid era.

He told the Commission it was clear what the program's remit was.

...