The Trial of the Order of the Solar Temple

The trial of the Order of the Solar Temple

See also: The Order of the Solar Temple (OTS)

Press release by Jean-Pierre Brard, 22 December 2006

The light will not be shed on the massacre of the Order of the Solar Temple

The Grenoble Court of Appeal has just acquitted the only person prosecuted in the trial of the Order of the Solar Temple, the Franco-Swiss conductor Michel Tabachnik. The closing speech of the advocate general — as irresolute and imprecise as it was strange — foreshadowed this outcome.

The advocate general nevertheless acknowledged that Michel Tabachnik, by feeding deadly writings to the victims of the “killing-suicide” of 1995, “participated in this facile bewitchment and he was not fooled”.

The day after the release of the report of the parliamentary commission of inquiry on cults, pointing in particular to the negligence or complacency of certain State services, it is regrettable that mental manipulation and psychological violence are still too often underestimated by the justice system.

As for the circumstances of the Vercors massacre, they are no clearer at the end of this trial. The forensic examinations carried out on the bodies of the wife and one of the sons of the former ski champion Jean Vuarnet confirm the presence of high doses of phosphorus and therefore suggest the action of persons outside the group of victims.

As the families are demanding, the investigation must be reopened and a new investigating judge appointed. Greater resources must be allocated to the investigators, in particular to explore the financial and mafia-related aspects of the OTS.

This court decision does not close the OTS file. It only deepens the sense of opacity and impunity that reigns in this case.

31 October 2006

No sentence requested against Michel Tabachnik

GRENOBLE (Reuters) - The Grenoble prosecutor general’s office requested no sentence against the Franco-Swiss conductor Michel Tabachnik, tried on appeal in the case concerning the deaths of 74 followers of the Order of the Solar Temple (OTS) cult between 1994 and 1997.

The advocate general considered that the defendant was not an active member of the cult and that his responsibility for the deaths was not established.

(…)

The musician’s lawyer, Maître Francis Szpiner, denounced an “accusation of a crime of opinion” and considers that Michel Tabachnik’s theoretical writings, the “Archées”, are so hermetic that in his eyes they could not have provoked anything whatsoever. After his closing argument, the Court of Appeal’s ruling will be deliberated.

OTS: The head of the investigation does not incriminate Michel Tabachnik GRENOBLE - A police officer testifying at the trial of Michel Tabachnik judged that the Franco-Swiss conductor could not be accused of “actual assassination” in the tragedy of the Order of the Solar Temple (OTS). Mr Tabachnik is being tried on appeal over the deaths of 16 people in 1995 in the Vercors. Commander Gilbert Houvenaghel, of the judicial police, was called to testify on the third day of Mr Tabachnik’s trial. The latter is being tried in Grenoble for “criminal association”. (…) “Michel Tabachnik is not a bad fellow, but he was a true believer, a man who believed in it and who, when he learned what had happened, was overwhelmed by the scale of the massacre,” stated the head of the investigation, according to whom the conductor nevertheless cannot be accused of “actual assassination”. According to him, Mr Tabachnik “survived the tragedy because he had a secret mission”. When the public prosecutor asked him what “secret mission” this was, the police officer could give no answer. The defendant’s lawyer, Maître Francis Szpiner, intervened with irony: “Michel Tabachnik is guilty because he was not assassinated; the proof of his guilt is that he is alive.” The head of the investigation also rejected the various theories circulating around the tragedy, such as an intervention by the mafia or by arms traffickers. He added that the OTS followers “were often good people who were seeking an absolute in a society going wrong, who helped one another but were unaware of the secret dealings of their leaders”. (ats / 26 October 2006 15:44)

Order of the Solar Temple: Tabachnik’s tears SERGE PUEYO. Published 25 October 2006 - Updated 25 October 2006: 07:51

The Franco-Swiss conductor is being tried on appeal in Grenoble. In 1995, sixteen followers of the cult were found dead in the Vercors. YESTERDAY, when Michel Tabachnik, 61, came to the stand to state his identity and his date of birth, the man began to weep, to sob. For years he has proclaimed his innocence, asserting that this case has shattered his life, his career, and that he had nothing to do with the massacres of the cult which left 74 dead in Quebec, Switzerland and France. “In 1994, there was a massacre in Switzerland and the mother of my children died. I was not incriminated by the justice system, which closed the file with a dismissal. Eleven years ago, there was the Vercors case with more deaths; a French investigating judge placed me under judicial investigation. I was acquitted, so for eleven years I have been under media and judicial pressure for reasons that are unfounded and fundamentally unjust,” Michel Tabachnik also proclaimed yesterday before microphones and cameras. In 2001, tried for his “participation in a criminal association with a view to the preparation of a crime”, the conductor had been acquitted on the benefit of the doubt. The prosecution had appealed, as the prosecutor had requested five years’ imprisonment against the conductor, reproaching him for having, “through his esoteric writings”, pushed the followers towards a “transit to Sirius” — that is, to commit suicide with their loved ones in a clearing at Saint-Pierre-de-Chérennes (Isère). Dressed in a black suit and a midnight-blue shirt, the man who was once very close to the gurus of the Order of the Solar Temple (OTS) once again rejected before the Court of Appeal all the suspicions weighing on him. “I made just one mistake in this whole adventure: taking part in it idealistically,” Michel Tabachnik acknowledged. In 1981, he became president of the Golden Way foundation, which he had helped create with Jo Di Mambro, the future guru of the OTS. “Its statutes are entirely honourable; it speaks of a cultural foundation, of organising conferences. The objective seemed magnificent to me,” Michel Tabachnik asserts. But the Golden Way was in fact an esoteric organisation at the heart of the OTS nebula. Five of its founders would meet their deaths in the massacres of the cult. “We were all very idealistic” In 1981, the foundation acquired a farm in Switzerland where around thirty people would live communally, within “the Fraternity” — nearly all of them now deceased in the OTS killings. “In this case there is a great deal of conflation and confusion; I never belonged to the Fraternity,” Michel Tabachnik remarks. The presiding judge points out to him that he signed several documents during his three years at the head of the Golden Way. “Those were papers the secretary gave me; I signed without paying attention to what was in them,” the defendant replies. But Michel Tabachnik still has to explain his participation, dressed in a white cape, in several esoteric ceremonies during which mysterious apparitions took place, such as that of the Holy Grail. “These apparitions — did you believe in them?” the magistrate asks. “Yes, I believed in them. There was a fervour. I only learned that these apparitions were trickery after the massacres in Switzerland in 1994,” Michel Tabachnik asserts, hand on heart. http://www.lefigaro.fr/

Slaughter at the cult Le Monde, 15 August 2006, by Jean-Pierre Tenoux [Full text] Judge André Piller likes journalists. So much so that on Wednesday 5 October 1994 he offered to let them go in small groups to the La Rochette farm at Cheiry, canton of Fribourg (Switzerland), to take “a few pictures” there. That the press — who went off to photograph the 23 bodies brought out of the burnt-down building and lined up under white shrouds in the property’s orchard — might in passing blur any possible traces hardly troubled him. That morning, in revealing to the world the existence of the Order of the Solar Temple (OTS), the magistrate had from the outset adopted the theory of collective suicide. Despite the victims’ bound hands. Despite the bullets fired from improbable angles. Despite the plastic bags wrapped around the skulls and the house’s remotely-triggered ignition device. Forty-eight hours later, “so as not to shock believers or attract onlookers”, André Piller had the cult’s secret sanctuary, dug beneath the residence, destroyed. Why burden oneself with such a pasteboard stage-set, since there was no killer from outside — and therefore no fingerprints to look for? By thus leaving whole swathes of the case unexplored, André Piller would allow many fantasies to prosper. Admittedly, 120 kilometres further south that same day, Jean-Pascal Jacquemet, investigating judge of the canton of Valais, opted for a lower media profile. Called to Les Granges-sur-Salvan, where twenty-five other corpses had been found in two burnt chalets, he nevertheless did not exploit all the evidence, as reporters would later show by recovering items abandoned on site by the investigators. Added to the lack of curiosity of the Canadian police after the identification, on the very same date, of five other bodies of OTS members at Morin Heights, north of Montreal, these deficiencies would never be remedied. When Luc Fontaine, investigating judge in Grenoble (Isère), launched his investigations after the discovery, on Friday 22 December 1995, of the charred remains of sixteen other followers in the clearing of the Trou de l’enfer, in the Vercors, he did so once again with limited resources, without being relieved of his other cases, to the great displeasure of the civil parties. In the end, with the final “departure” of five members of the Order at Saint-Casimir (Quebec) on Saturday 22 March 1997, 74 men, women and children met their deaths in these “transits to Sirius”, named after the distant star where their souls were supposed to begin a new cycle of life. The corpses were, most of the time, dressed in a ritual cape — white, black or golden, according to the degree of initiation attained. Beforehand, some had been killed with .22 long rifle calibre weapons, others put to sleep after taking medication or receiving an injection, sometimes a prelude to the burning of their corpses. We will never really know who among them volunteered to end their earthly days, even if it meant being “assisted”, and who was murdered. On bodies examined in the Vercors, the gendarmes noted traces of blows and fractures. Proof, for their families, of final attempts at revolt. It would take months to untangle the skein. If not to understand it. For the group’s two gurus — Jo Di Mambro, 60, a former jeweller in the Gard converted to apocalyptic preaching, and Luc Jouret, 47, the Belgian homeopathic doctor who served as his recruiter — took their secrets to the grave, at Salvan, in 1994. The investigators would have to make do with the jumble left behind them. On the esoteric side first, with an OTS built on the legend of the Templars and their avatars, but whose primary vocation seems to have been to make money for the benefit of its leaders. Rigged ceremonies suggesting to followers the apparition of their grand master, the birth of a “cosmic child” supposed to have been “conceived by theogamy” — in other words, without sexual intercourse — when it was in fact the daughter of Jo Di Mambro and his mistress: the credulous disciples were spared nothing. The motive for the Morin Heights killing, moreover, came down to eliminating another baby whose parents, on leaving the cult, had given the same first name, Emmanuel, as the “divine child”. The other face of the OTS, evoked many times but never established by the courts, is made of rumours: considerable sums of money sent to Australia, links with the former Service d’action civique, the special services, the Italian P2 Lodge or the Var mafia — many leads would be put forward. The membership in the OTS of two French police officers — one of whom, Jean-Pierre Lardanchet, played an active role in the killings — would also raise the question of an infiltration or manipulation of the Order. All the more so since Di Mambro, before his death, had a letter posted to Charles Pasqua, then Minister of the Interior, beginning with “Very dear Charlie”. Tasked with sending this letter, along with others, after the tragedies of Cheiry and Salvan in 1994, Patrick Vuarnet, who belonged to the OTS, said nothing of it to his father, Jean, a former Olympic ski champion. He confided only in his mother, Edith, a disciple of the cult like himself, with whom he would die the following year in the Vercors. Four years later, Judge Fontaine’s investigation would manage to target only one defendant: Michel Tabachnik, 62, whose ex-wife had perished at Cheiry. This renowned conductor, a friend of Boulez and Xenakis, is accused of being the author of the “Archées”, the OTS’s initiatory texts, of having belonged to its hierarchy and, above all, of having given a lecture in Avignon on Saturday 24 September 1994 announcing the programmed end of the Order, ten days before the “transits” in Switzerland. In April 2001, he was finally sent before the Grenoble criminal court for “participation in a criminal association”. But the magistrates, unable to establish that his hermetic writings formed part of a homicidal intent, pronounced his acquittal. The prosecution having contested their decision, Michel Tabachnik will appear again, on 2 October 2006, before the Grenoble Court of Appeal. It is to be feared, more than ten years after the events, that this second trial will bring nothing new.

Michel Tabachnik’s appeal trial will take place from 24 October AP | 20.04.06 | 17:10 GRENOBLE (AP) — The appeal trial of the Franco-Swiss conductor Michel Tabachnik will take place from 24 October to 3 November 2006, before the Grenoble Court of Appeal, it was learned on Thursday from the Grenoble prosecutor general’s office. Initially scheduled for early October, the hearings were pushed back at the musician’s request, the same source specified. Michel Tabachnik is being prosecuted for “participation in a criminal association” after the deaths of 13 followers of the Order of the Solar Temple (OTS) and three children, in December 1995, in the Vercors massif. Michel Tabachnik had been acquitted in April 2001, at first instance, by the Grenoble criminal court. The prosecution had appealed that decision. AP

Metro France, 17 February 2006, interview by Xavier Thouvenot / metro lyon [Full text] Ten years on, Maurice Fusier has investigated the Solar Temple cult Ten years ago, sixteen followers of the Solar Temple cult met their deaths in the Vercors. The investigation had concluded it was a collective suicide. In total, seventy-four people died tragically in Switzerland, Canada and France in the name of the Order of the Solar Temple (OTS) between October 1994 and March 1997. As the appeal trial of the conductor Michel Tabachnik, suspected of being the OTS’s number three, is due to be held in October, Maurice Fusier, senior reporter at Radio France, reopens the debate.

• You do not believe the collective suicide theory. Why?

• I bring a new element to my investigation: an expert in the carbonisation of fatty tissue, Professor Gilbert Lavoué, discovered that, even five years after the Vercors tragedies, there was 30 to 40% excess phosphorus on the site, which supports the theory of a flamethrower having been used to destroy the bodies. So this is a crime. But as this expert was not appointed by the courts, the justice system rejects this element.

• Are there other contradictions?

• When you hear one of the experts of the investigating judge, Luc Fontaine, declare at Michel Tabachnik’s trial in Grenoble in 2001 that these were esoteric crimes, and then, two years later, he tells Nice Matin that we are facing a State secret, you have to wonder.

• What is your objection to the collective suicide theory?

• The OTS was present in Canada and Switzerland. Why did these two countries quickly close the case? Why did no one take an interest in the fact that two French police officers died in the Vercors? On the financial side, the investigation says nothing. Where did the 93 billion US dollars (1994 value) that disappeared into Australian banks go?

• You explain that the OTS was more than a cult — a secret society serving less-than-noble interests. Can you elaborate?

The OTS was a cult, but it was also a sleeper network, like other cult movements, and one that went wrong: money laundering, trafficking of all kinds, and above all arms trafficking. The OTS served inglorious networks such as the SAC (editor’s note: Service d’action civique, a Gaullist militia). The OTS had some 800 followers throughout the world. Only 74 people died in the massacres. If we exclude the eleven unfortunate children or adolescents who accompanied their parents into death, there remain 63 victims, all of whom were accountants of the OTS.

OTS: the mystery remains intact — the documentary does not 3.7 million viewers watched this programme Thursday 02 February 2006 Yves Boisset wronged by France 2? “My film was amputated,” laments the director of Les Mystères sanglants de l’OTS, at 11 pm on channel Two. His documentary denounces the “deficiencies” of the judicial investigation into the massacres of the Order of the Solar Temple cult. Seventy-four members had perished between 1994 and 1997. “These were not suicides, but assassinations in which State officials were involved,” he contends. Alas, France 2’s legal department refused to allow the names of “certain right-wing parties”, implicated according to Boisset in this tragedy, to be cited. “These precautions apply to all our documentaries,” the channel states. “Several accusations were not sufficiently substantiated.” The same reservations from the producer Images et Compagnie: “This film contained interpretations. It was better to keep only what was proven.”

Alice Coffin “I see it rather as a collective murder. I formally reject the theory of a collective suicide decided by all — that idea is pure cinema,” declares Bernard Geiger, police commissioner, canton of Valais (Switzerland), who took part in the investigation into the deaths of the members of the Solar Temple. (Extract from Yves Boisset’s documentary “Les mystères sanglants de l’OTS”, broadcast on France 2 on 2 February 2006)

Les Mystères sanglants de l’OTS France 2, 11 pm. “Seventy-four victims, no culprits.” That is the laconic conclusion of the documentary directed by Yves Boisset, ten years after the dramatic affair of the Organisation of the Solar Temple (OTS). From the outset, the filmmaker plunges us back into the horror of this series of crimes, suicides and fires, using extracts from television news bulletins. But the images of the charred bodies quickly give way to the investigation conducted in France, Switzerland and Canada. He first returns to the genesis of the OTS, drawing the portrait of its three éminences grises: Jo di Membro, guru; Luc Jouret, scientific guarantor; and Jean-Michel Tabachnik, artistic reference. Boisset then relentlessly demonstrates the flaws and failings of the investigation using the testimony of police officers, journalists, relatives of the victims, witnesses and lawyers. Little by little, he gives substance to a frightening thesis: the true beneficiaries of the OTS’s cult delusions, as lucrative as they were, did not meet their deaths but slipped through the meshes of the judicial system. Marianne Behar

Television The disorders of the Solar Temple by Bruno ICHER DAILY: Thursday 02 February 2006 FRANCE 2, 11 pm. “Les Mystères sanglants de l’OTS”, by Yves Boisset. The case is exceptional, but one still had to know how to tell it. Like a gigantic thriller stuffed with twists. Yves Boisset set about the investigation and the narration of the affair of the Order of the Solar Temple, driven by an evident fascination, as if he were writing a delirious screenplay. A cult, mafia networks, arms trafficking and money laundering, investigations botched deliberately or not, 74 dead found poisoned, beaten, suffocated or “suicided” in Canada, Switzerland and France, and one central witness, the conductor Michel Tabachnik, the only important member of the cult to have appeared in court (before the criminal court) while continuing to defend his status as scapegoat. Distances. The whole merit of the documentary, besides making the chronological unfolding of events clear (which is no small thing), is to have kept its distance from the almost picturesque connotation that accompanies the cult’s esoteric masquerades, with white capes and rigged swords shooting lightning bolts. As a result, the work was concentrated on the innumerable police and judicial lacunae whose accumulation ends up giving this news item the appearance of an affair of State. The method has a slight “conspiracy theory” air without ever, for all that, tipping into the far-fetched or the easy shortcut. Impasse. Between the lines, one question therefore keeps returning to the table: a combination of circumstances, or attempts to hush up the affair? Boisset obviously favours developing the second hypothesis, placing end to end coincidences that are perhaps not coincidences. Jo Di Mambro, founder of the OTS, was close to Charles Pasqua’s SAC. Enormous sums of money in Di Mambro’s accounts were frozen in Australia, where the investigation also ended in a curious impasse. A document suddenly appears, mentioning the payment of large sums to right-wing political parties… From inconsistencies to strange negligence, Boisset winds the thread back to another “odd” affair: the assassination of Yann Piat, former Front National deputy, while she was taking an interest in a property project led by an OTS bigwig. At the end of this dizzying story, no irrefutable proof, no absolute certainty. But — and this is ultimately the most troubling thing — the same observation as at the start of the film: “Seventy-four victims and no culprit.” http://www.liberation.fr/page.php?Article=356122

The appeal trial of the Order of the Solar Temple tragedy set for 2 October AP | 17.01.06 | 12:33 GRENOBLE (AP) — The criminal chamber of the Grenoble Court of Appeal has set 2 October as the date for the appeal trial of the Franco-Swiss conductor Michel Tabachnik, prosecuted after the deaths of 13 followers of the Order of the Solar Temple (OTS) and three children in December 1995 in the Vercors, it was learned on Tuesday at the hearing. The appeal trial will run from 2 to 7 October, specified Jacques Buisson, president of the Court of Appeal. Michel Tabachnik and his counsel were not present on Tuesday morning at this scheduling hearing. This postponement is the fourth requested by the civil parties, who invoke a legal problem: the placing under judicial investigation, in Paris, for “violation of the secrecy of the investigation and of professional secrecy” of the psychiatric expert Jean-Marie Abgrall, author of the report on the indoctrination of OTS followers. A case for which the expert has not yet been tried. Initially set for 22 September 2003, Michel Tabachnik’s appeal trial was pushed back a first time to 14 June 2004, then to 13 June 2005, before this Tuesday’s scheduling hearing. Michel Tabachnik, 62, is the only person prosecuted after the deaths of 13 OTS followers and three children in December 1995 in the Vercors massif. Placed under judicial investigation for “participation in a criminal association”, he was acquitted on the benefit of the doubt in April 2001 by the Grenoble criminal court, but the prosecution had appealed the decision. AP

Arm-wrestling between channel Two and Yves Boisset An article from Le Parisien, 13/12/05 The director Yves Boisset (“Dupont Lajoie” for the cinema, “l’Affaire Dreyfus”, “l’Affaire Seznec”, “Jean Moulin” for television…) has just shot a documentary on the deaths of sixteen followers of the Order of the Solar Temple on 23 December 1995. His investigation demonstrates “with near-certainty”, in his words, that contrary to the official theses, this tragedy was in no way a collective suicide, but a murder motivated by “politico-mafia reasons”. The film would notably implicate certain politicians, cited by name. Co-produced by France 2 and Lagardère Images, it was due to be broadcast “at the very beginning of the year”, according to Patricia Boutinard-Rouelle, director of magazines and documentaries at the channel. But according to Yves Boisset, the legal department of France Télévisions was “demanding” cuts as well as the “erasing” of proper names and the blurring of images that would be “defamatory”. The channel is currently negotiating with the director.

An interview with Michel Tabachnik: “I was declared not guilty at first instance” Le Parisien, 16 December 2005, by Azzeddine Ahmed-Chaouch [Full text]

• Ten years ago, 16 followers of the Order of the Solar Temple (OTS) were found dead in the Vercors. Many victims’ families regard you as one of the movement’s masterminds. Ten years after the tragedy, how do you feel?
• Michel Tabachnik: On 25 June 2001, the Grenoble criminal court declared me not guilty. The justice system heard me, investigated, and studied my texts in detail. I was placed under judicial investigation by the investigating judge because of “media pressure”, by his own admission. But today, the fact is that nothing was held against me.
• In 1995, you claimed not to be a follower of the OTS. Today, you no longer deny having been a member? At the time, I was afraid of being associated with the Vercors tragedy and I preferred to deny everything outright. That lie clearly did me a disservice. I did indeed officially join the movement in the 1980s. For me, the OTS was a society of reflection, like freemasonry. I took part little, because my work as a conductor took up a great deal of my time. I did occasionally give lectures; I was indeed passionate about philosophy and esotericism. Concerning the texts I produced, I would like to add a clarification that has its importance: yes, I wrote some, but well before I became interested in the OTS. - After the triple tragedy that claimed 74 victims, did you think that the followers’ deaths could be connected with the texts you had written?
• I never called for death or developed the concept of “transit” to the planet Sirius. I have always loved life; I have a very positive temperament. Overnight, people wanted to draw a link between the “collective suicides” and my texts. Worse still, they wanted to associate me with the Vercors tragedy. I did not know any of the people present that day. I believe I was the victim of a relentless campaign. - What were the consequences? At the time, I lost all my conducting contracts. I found myself without work; it was terrible. I lost ten years of my life. The media are the main culprits. Some even sought my guilt at any price. My trial is constantly mentioned, but no one says that I was declared not guilty at first instance. We are doubly affected: my children lost their mother in the fire at Cheiry, in Switzerland. - What is your life like today? My professional recognition has ended up prevailing. I am gradually regaining my place in the profession. I am starting a concert tour in December with an orchestra in Amsterdam. My son has succeeded: he obtained a doctorate in physics in New York. And, fortunately, during these ten years of hell, my true friends never let me down; they were always there. - There remains the appeal trial, which has already been postponed several times. If the Grenoble court’s decision is confirmed, will you turn the page for good? For me, everything is practically over. Recently, I contributed to the director Yves Boisset for a documentary he will make on the OTS. Then it will be time to move on to something else. No question of writing another book on the affair, for example. I am going to devote myself to my family and to my passion: music.

The appeal trial in the Order of the Solar Temple case postponed for the third time LE MONDE | 14.06.05 | 13:45 - Updated 14.06.05 | 13:45 GRENOBLE, from our special correspondent Will the affair of the Order of the Solar Temple (OTS) ever know its judicial epilogue? There is reason to doubt it after the decision of the Grenoble Court of Appeal, on Monday 13 June, to postpone the trial for the third time. The only defendant in this case, the Franco-Swiss conductor and composer Michel Tabachnik, will have to wait a few months before learning his fate. Regarded as one of the leaders of the OTS, responsible for writing the Archées, texts constituting the cult’s teachings, he is being prosecuted for “criminal association”.

The prosecution accuses him of having, through his writings, indirectly contributed to the deaths of sixteen followers, in December 1995, in a forest of the Vercors. At the end of his trial at first instance, Michel Tabachnik had been acquitted, on 25 June 2001, but the prosecution had appealed the judgment.

“DILATORY MANOEUVRES” This new postponement, requested by certain victims’ families assisted by Maître Alain Leclerc, was justified, like the two previous ones, by the need to await the outcome of a case under judicial investigation in Paris. Jean-Marie Abgrall, cult specialist and principal expert in the OTS case, was placed under judicial investigation, in 1999 and again in 2002, for “violation of the secrecy of the investigation and of professional secrecy”, after the filing of a complaint with an application to join the proceedings as a civil party… by Maître Leclerc. The lawyer — followed on this point by Maître Jean-Michel Pesenti, counsel for the Union nationale des associations de défense de la famille et de l’individu (Unadfi) — considers that Mr Tabachnik’s trial cannot be held until the courts have ruled on the Abgrall case: his possible conviction would have the consequence, in his eyes, of discrediting the expert reports produced in the present case. This position loses some of its force when one knows that Maître Leclerc is partly responsible for the delays in the judicial investigation of the Abgrall case. Appeals, applications to the Court of Cassation — he has used the whole arsenal of the code of criminal procedure to delay the settlement of the case. “Dilatory manoeuvres,” denounced Bernard Azéma, the advocate general, at the Court of Appeal hearing. In response, Maître Leclerc promised to abide by the result of the latest action he has brought before the investigating chamber, assuring that the Grenoble trial could be held before the end of the year. But the magistrates preferred, this time, not to give a date for the new trial. All the parties will meet again on 17 January 2006, for a scheduling hearing: stock will be taken of the progress of the Abgrall case and, barring unforeseen events, Mr Tabachnik will know when he is to be retried. Acacio Pereira http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0,36-661871,0.html

On Alain Vuarnet’s website: In order to seek the truth, the victims’ families are currently fighting on three fronts

• the hearing at the Grenoble Court of Appeal, which has been postponed to 17 January 2006
• the Paris judicial investigation under way, which has placed under investigation the two experts of the Grenoble case, Messrs Chaumeil and Abgrall
• the judicial investigation under way at the Tribunal de grande instance of Vannes concerning the letter of 21 April 1997 (see explanation in the title)

The families of the OTS victims want to reopen the judicial investigation Date: 23 March 2004 at 00:22:35 CET Subject: Justice PARIS (Reuters) - The families of members of the Order of the Solar Temple (OTS) who died in a massacre in the Vercors, in December 1995, have submitted three new items in support of a request to reopen the judicial investigation, including a document showing — if its authenticity is verified — the existence of relations between the cult and political parties. Alain Vuarnet, René and Muguette Rostan, Willy and Giséla Schleimer and their lawyer, Maître Alain Leclerc, who contest the collective suicide theory upheld so far by the courts, explained their approach on Monday at a press conference. The first document is a copy of a letter dated 21 April 1997 and addressed by a law firm to a bank, detailing the distribution of 17 million francs (about 2.5 million euros) among several public figures and political parties, the OTS and AMORC (Ancient and Mystical Order Rosae Crucis), an organisation suspected of links with the OTS. The civil parties and their lawyer admit that they have to date no guarantee that this document, received by anonymous mail, is not a forgery, but ask the courts to take it up. “It is such an enormous document that on reading it it may seem implausible,” Alain Vuarnet acknowledged. “We simply ask the courts to be willing to verify the authenticity of this document.” “If the document is genuine, it proves that the Order of the Solar Temple was in activity after the last massacre of 22 March 1997 (the ‘collective suicide’ of five followers in Canada) and that the leaders of this criminal organisation are still alive,” writes Maître Leclerc in the supplementary application he sent on Monday to the public prosecutor of Grenoble, for the reopening of the investigation into the Vercors affair. The second document is an official record of an interview with Dr Jean-Marie Abgrall, cult specialist placed under judicial investigation for violation of the secrecy of the investigation. In it he asserts, as he has done in statements to Le Point and Nice-Matin, that the Renewed Order of the Temple (ORT), ancestor of the OTS, had relations with the Gladio network, set up during the Cold War by the American secret services to fight communism in Europe.

Jean-Marie Abgrall is also said to mention relations between AMORC — of which he himself was a member for a time — and the French networks in Africa, known as the “Foccart networks”. PHOSPHORUS FLAMETHROWER “It is a truth that is beyond us, that goes as far as State secrecy,” says this psychiatrist in a statement published on 15 February 2003 by Nice-Matin. “I will speak out one day (…) There are too many stakes, too many interests at play.” Jean-Marie Abgrall “reveals (…) that the Order of the Solar Temple, like AMORC and the ORT, were created and controlled by networks of French and foreign secret services,” explains Maître Leclerc — information, the lawyer stresses, which the psychiatrist had not shared with the judicial investigation. The civil parties and their lawyer ask that Dr Abgrall be heard by the courts on these statements. Finally, the third document is a “white note” from the Renseignements généraux on the trial of the conductor Michel Tabachnik, prosecuted for “participation in a criminal association” as part of the investigation into this massacre. This report, which multiplies remarks aimed at discrediting the civil parties, was transmitted by its author on 28 May 2001 to the investigating judge Luc Fontaine, who himself passed it on, during the deliberations, to the vice-president of the Tribunal de grande instance of Grenoble, Gérard Dubois, responsible for pronouncing the judgment. Maître Leclerc denounces a “disloyal, irregular and illegal” intervention aimed at “influencing the magistrate”. “These new elements are such as to support the idea that the judicial investigation of Judge Fontaine could not be carried through in order to seek out and identify all the perpetrators of the crimes committed by the OTS nebula, with its financial motives,” the lawyer concludes. The families of the victims of the Vercors massacre reproach the courts for not having taken into account the possibility of a crime committed by outside elements, supported in their view by the forensic examinations carried out on the charred corpses. “We found phosphorus. If there is phosphorus, it means a flamethrower was used to kill these people,” Alain Vuarnet thus explained. “For nine corpses out of 16, the carbonisation went as far as the fusion of the bones, which means a heat of at least 1,600°C, whereas in a forest, in the middle of winter, with petrol and wood, you cannot go beyond 700°C.” It is on the basis of these expert reports and other elements that the civil parties and their lawyer filed their request for the reopening of the judicial investigation on 21 October. Monday 22 March 2004, 19:08

Order of the Solar Temple: A trial in trompe-l’oeil Article published in the 22 September 2003 edition of l’Humanité After the new elements discrediting the suicide theory, the appeal trial of Michel Tabachnik, which opens today, is expected to be adjourned. Will the appeal trial of Michel Tabachnik, which opens this morning in Grenoble, be held as planned? The fate of the renowned conductor, the only person placed under judicial investigation in the case of the Order of the Solar Temple (OTS), may be postponed to a later date. Two experts involved in the case have been placed under judicial investigation. If they were convicted, today’s trial would ipso facto be quashed. Will the Court of Appeal run that risk? Seventy-four people (including eleven minors) linked to this apocalyptic cult had been found dead in three countries: five victims in a burnt house in Canada; then twenty-five corpses in a farm and chalets set on fire in Switzerland, in 1994; sixteen half-charred bodies in December 1995 in France, in a clearing of the Vercors; and finally five more victims in 1997, in Canada. The Canadian justice system issued dismissals in the two cases concerning it, holding that these were suicides. The Swiss judges very quickly embraced the theory of mystical drift: the followers were said to have organised their “transit to the star Sirius”. In France, Judge Fontaine had rejected the idea of collective suicide. As two key figures of the cult, Jo di Mambro and Doctor Jouret, were among the victims, he had sent Michel Tabachnik before the court for “participation in a criminal association… with persons now deceased, but perpetrators, co-perpetrators or accomplices of crimes of assassination”. Was Michel Tabachnik the éminence grise of the OTS? He pleads naivety and speaks of a “witch hunt”, since he is reproached for esoteric writings. Tried in April 2001, he had been declared not guilty, to the great displeasure of the victims’ families, including that of the former Olympic ski champion Jean Vuarnet, who lost his wife and a son in the tragedy. A senior reporter at Radio France and author of a valuable book on the Tabachnik trial (1), Maurice Fusier considers the collective suicide theory “monstrous”. “How can it be upheld when several victims were found with their hands tied behind their backs and a plastic bag over their heads? And the children — did they commit suicide?” Our colleague notes that the investigation — spirited away in Canada, botched in Switzerland — left aside its financial and cloak-and-dagger dimensions: “Judge Fontaine also followed the esoteric trail, without inquiring into the transfers of funds carried out in Zurich or in Australia.” Money laundering? For whom? Who was above the “grand master” Di Mambro? What of his links with the SAC, the Gaullist outfit dissolved after another killing at Auriol? How to interpret the testament letter that Di Mambro sent to the Minister of the Interior of the time, Charles Pasqua, which began with “Very dear Charlie”? How to explain the presence of two police officers among the victims? How to interpret the pressure exerted by the Renseignements généraux on two investigators to make them change their statements? During the Cold War, Western secret services used cults (notably Templar ones) for unavowable operations. The Berlin Wall having fallen, did the OTS still have a reason to exist? The massacre of the followers took place just as many of them were discovering Di Mambro’s mystical “trickery” and numerous embezzlements. “As for Tabachnik,” notes Maurice Fusier, “he lied constantly. He said he did not belong to the OTS, that he did not know Di Mambro, when he had been associating with him for seventeen years and was an ambassador of the Order. He earned a great deal of money with the OTS while remaining passive. He is no victim.” Whether the Tabachnik trial is adjourned or not, the trial of the OTS will remain to be held. Serge Garde (1) Des Mots qui font des morts, Maurice Fusier, Éditions Pandora Publishing, 19 euros.

http://www.humanite.fr/journal/2003-09-22/2003-09-22-379304

OTS members murdered with a flamethrower? 19/09/2003 13:21 Associated Press (AP) On 23 December 1995, the charred bodies of 16 members of the Order of the Solar Temple were discovered in a forest near Saint-Pierre-de-Chérennes, in the French Alps. The corpses were arranged so as to form a star. A year earlier, 53 other members of the cult had been found dead in Quebec and Switzerland. © AP The Vuarnet family, two of whose members perished in 1995 in the presumed collective suicide of 16 followers of the Order of the Solar Temple (OTS), intends to revive the murder theory by shortly producing a private report which would show that the victims were killed with a flamethrower. “Today, we are bringing the courts irrefutable proof that we are dealing with a crime,” Alain Vuarnet stated on Friday on France-Info, referring to the tragedy of 23 December 1995 in the Vercors massif, of which his mother and brother were victims, near the commune of Saint-Pierre-de-Chérennes (Isère). According to him, the results of the analyses carried out on the bodies of Edith and Patrick Vuarnet, exhumed last July, “show an excess of 21 to 32% of phosphorus, which is of exogenous origin — that is, brought in from outside”. Phosphorus, which can only be handled with a flamethrower “with a directional jet, explains the absence of fallen wood around the fire site, explains the absence of large quantities of ash, and finally explains the partial carbonisation of the bodies,” continued the son of the ski champion Jean Vuarnet, according to whom “the suicide theory does not hold.” As the appeal trial approached — opening the following Monday — of Michel Tabachnik, the Franco-Swiss conductor accused of “doctrinal teaching that allegedly created a dynamic of homicide” in the OTS affair, Alain Vuarnet stated that the investigation was “botched”, “unfinished”, and asked that it be completed “in order to put the real questions to Michel Tabachnik and perhaps to other people”. The vice-president of the National Assembly’s study group on cults, Jean-Pierre Brard, for his part called for the postponement of Mr Tabachnick’s trial, so as to allow the courts to resume the investigation. “I think the case must be completely reopened,” he said on France-Info, “Michel Tabachnik’s trial must be postponed, and the resources in investigators must be provided to redo the entire judicial investigation.” For the communist deputy-mayor of Montreuil (Seine-Saint-Denis), “it is clear: there was no suicide, but assassination.” Mr Tabachnik’s appeal trial is due to take place from 22 to 26 September before the Grenoble Court of Appeal. He had been acquitted on 25 June 2001 by the Grenoble criminal court, after three weeks of trial. The public prosecutor, who had requested five years’ imprisonment, had lodged an appeal against that acquittal. (The page that contained this text has been removed from the Internet.)