General Lothar Paul Neethling (29 August 1935 in East Prussia[1] – 11 July 2005) was chief deputy commissioner (second-in-command) of the South African Police in the apartheid era.
A highly qualified scientist, General Neethling was alleged to have used police forensic laboratories for the production of poisons to kill anti-apartheid activists, and to have developed chemical and biological weapons for use against the black population in South Africa.
[citation needed] More widely, he was regarded as a brilliant scientist and was honoured by a number of international scientific organisations as well as receiving a medal from the government of Taiwan.
[4] Three years later, in 1989, Neethling's reputation as a "genius chemist" became tarnished after revelations by a former commander of the SAP's Vlakplaas death squad, Dirk Coetzee, were published in the anti-apartheid newspaper Vrye Weekblad.
Neethling denied Coetzee's allegations and sued each newspaper R1 million for defamation, but lost the case because the judge, Johann Kriegler, declared him to be an unreliable witness.
The newspaper's editor, Max du Preez, maintained that Neethling had lied in court and, after TRC hearings in September 1997, laid criminal charges of murder, perjury and fraud against him.