FRANCE/FILE: Franco-Swiss conductor Michel Tabachnik faces new charges in relation to the death of 16 Solar Temple cult members

Franco-Swiss conductor Michel Tabachnik went back to trial on Tuesday (October 24) in Grenoble, four years after he was acquitted of conspiring to brainwash 74 members of the Solar Temple doomsday cult into accepting death by occult ritual. The 64-year-old musician is charged with "criminal conspiracy" in relation to 16 of those cult members, three of them children, whose charred bodies were discovered in the French Alps in 1995. Tabachnik was cleared in June 2001 after judges ruled there was insufficient evidence he helped set up the suicides of 16 followers of the Order of the Solar Temple sect, but victims' families appealed against his acquittal. The Solar Temple gained world-wide notoriety after 74 of its members were found dead in woods in France, Switzerland and Canada between 1994 and 1997. The dead were mostly shot or asphyxiated in what were apparently either ritual murders or mass suicides. Among the dead were the sect's founders, who were accused of milking money from members and convincing them they must die in a fire to attain bliss in the afterworld. Alain Vuarnet, the son of a couple who were among the dead, said a few years ago a forensic expert had found traces of phosphorus in his parents' exhumed bodies, suggesting a flame-thrower had been used on them. "After 11 years of fighting with a blind justice, I should have given up. But I think that there is always some hope and behind the justice there is a human being. We always think that the justice is perfect, but like human beings it (justice) can make mistakes. So today I would like to think that the human being behind the court would listen to us. Today we are going to talk about Tabachnik," Vuarnet said when he arrived at the courthouse. Tabachnik has always maintained his innocence saying he did not know the fate of the 16 sect members although he admits he once had links to the cult.

ITN Source | October 25, 2006

Tags:. .order. .june. .court. .charges. .charged