Basson, also known as 'Dr Death', will not be prosecuted on six charges that South Africa's Constitutional Court last month ruled could be reinstated against him, South Africa's National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) announced on Wednesday last week.

The decision not to prosecute him on the charges - which all relate to murder plots outside South Africa, including in Namibia, Swaziland, Mozambique and London - was taken after the NPA concluded that it would not be legally possible to prosecute him again on those charges, because he had in essence already been acquitted on them.

The Constitutional Court ruled six weeks ago that the Pretoria High Court had wrongly quashed six charges against Basson in October 1999.

That was when Basson went on trial on 67 charges, including counts of murder, conspiracy to commit murder, drug dealing, and fraud.

The High Court threw those six charges out of court when it ruled that, because they related to crimes committed outside South Africa, a South African court did not have jurisdiction to try Basson on those charges.

The charges included allegations that Basson had helped murder as many as 200 Swapo guerrillas by poisoning them while they were held captive by South Africa between 1981 and 1988.

In another of the quashed charges it was alleged that Basson had conspired with members of the Civil Co-operation Bureau (CCB) - a secret hit squad run by the South African military - in the run-up to Namibia's Independence elections in 1989 to poison the water supply to a Swapo refugee camp near Windhoek in an attempt to derail the country's Independence process.

One of the charges that Pretoria High Court Judge Willie Hartzenberg left standing, and on which he then acquitted Basson, was another count of conspiracy to commit murder.

It was that charge that led the NPA to conclude that it would not be legally possible to recharge Basson on the six charges that the Constitutional Court reinstated.

"The National Prosecuting Authority of SA (NPA) has concluded that a fresh prosecution of Dr Wouter Basson on the charges originally quashed by the Pretoria High Court is in law not permissible," the NPA announced.

"This follows the NPA's thorough consideration of the judgement by the Constitutional Court passed several weeks ago, and all the relevant principles relating to the doctrine of double jeopardy."

In its judgement last month, the Constitutional Court pointedly made no ruling on the question of whether Basson would be able to raise a defence of double jeopardy - a claim that he had already been tried and judged on the same charges - if he were to be prosecuted again on the six reinstated charges.

That issue would have to be decided by a trial court if a fresh prosecution was instituted, the Constitutional Court commented.

"It is an intrinsic principle of South African law that an accused cannot be tried twice on the same offence or on substantially the same offence, irrespective of whether he was convicted or acquitted in the first trial," the NPA remarked in its statement.

Basson, a medical doctor who is now working as a heart specialist, scoffed at the prospect that he might be recharged after the Constitutional Court had handed down its judgement.

The South African media quoted him as commenting that the prosecution that continued to pursue the case against him after his acquittal was merely "ashamed, angry and sad".

He was reported to have remarked that he and that he believed that attempts to prosecute him were "all over bar the shouting".

That is an opinion that the NPA may have confirmed last week.

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