This article was one of many focused on the trial of senior cultist Michel Tabachnik. Since Tabachnik is one the few that survived, most of the blame has been placed on him. The surviving members of the cult seem to have mixed feelings on Tabachnik’s involvement with the death of their friends. It will be up to case made by the prosecution and defense to determine Tabachnik’s fate.

As the trial of French conductor Michel Tabachnik heats up, so does the press in their reports of the trial and the active role Tabachnik played in the life of The Order of Solar Temple. Bruce Wallace of The Ottawa Citizen reports on the trial that is expected to last two weeks with testimony from over fifty witnesses. If Tabachnik is found guilty he faces ten years of jail time.

The trial of Tabachnik is the first criminal trial into the ritualistic and violent deaths that claimed the lives of 74 cult members in the mid-1990s. French prosecutors are making the case that Tabachnik was a high-ranking cult member when the cult was nearing its end. The prosecution also claims that Tabachnik was aware of the death of sixteen cult members in late 1995. The sixteen members walked into a cleared forest area of the French Alps where fourteen of them were sedated, shot and “had their bodies burned and laid out in a star shape by two other cult members.” The remaining cult members then killed themselves as reported by Luc Fontaine, a French magistrate who carried out the six-year investigation into the mass suicides.

The Solar Temple became a wealthy organization, capitalizing on donations from members, and transforming their money into “ a web of businesses and several private homes on two continents.” Tabachnik has strong ties to this association, however he has denied any role in the death of the cult members. Tabachnik himself said he was a victim of di Mambro and Jouret and should be cleared on all charges.

An interesting fact to this case is that Swiss and Canadian authorities concluded the Solar Temple investigation years ago, filing no charges. The French authorities have been the only ones to bring about a charge against Tabachnik.

Overall this article provided a lot of information into the world of the Solar Temple. Bruce Wallace presented the facts clearly which helped to explain why this was such a complex case.

In an article written on May 30, 2001, BBC reporter Hugh Schofield reported on a controversial new law approved by French parliament created to limit the activities of religious cults. This new law is targeted at the prevention of psychological and physical pressure to recruit and retain members. While public opinion in France is in general support of the law, the law has human rights groups throughout France and the United States warning that this law could seriously limit religious freedom in France.

Sponsors of the law are proud of the law because it gives courts “new powers to clamp down on sects that resort to dangerous methods, such as brain washing or drugs, to lure young people into the fold.” Under the new law judges can shut down a sect once it has been convicted of a variety of offences including the misuse of medicines and misleading the public eye. Another law makes it a crime “to abuse a person in a state of dependence, caused by techniques liable to alter his [sic] judgment.”

Public opinion on this issue has been high since the mass suicides of the members of the Solar Temple nearly nine years ago. Many groups such as The Church of Scientology feel as if they are in the line of fire and will be strongly affected by the new law. The Church of Scientology along with many other human rights organizations, leaders of mainstream churches and the US government are arguing that the legislation is ambiguous and the door is open to many kinds of abuses of the law in the future.

It appears with this new law that judges can simply shut down a new religion solely based on limited evidence. Many cults feel a threat from this law. This could damage support for the cults and the law places an even greater stigma on religious groups that are separated from mainstream culture. It is for certain a long, uphill battle for many new religious cults in France.

On the morning of October 5, 1994, 48 bodies were found at a farm and two chalets burned to death in what looks like a new macabre death rite by another bizarre religious sect. 19 of the bodies were laying in a circle, some in gold gowns, and others in black, red, and white ceremonial capes. A cassette and documents found near the bodies led officials to believe that this group was concerned with the imminent end of the world.

Not too long after this discovery that five more bodies were found in a home in Quebec owned by the same sect, The Order of the Solar Temple. In Switzerland, 11 of the dead people were Canadians, which led to a directed correlation between the two events.

Police immediately began a manhunt for Luc Jouret, a Belgian homeopathic doctor who founded this sect in 1980. No one was really sure if he was among the dead found in Switzerland and Canada. Along with the mystery of the sects’ leader, there is the mystery of how his teaching were able to convince up-standing citizens, such as the Mayor of Richelieu, Quebec and an official in the Quebec Financial Council, to perform such an act.

In October of 1994, the four-dozen members of an ambiguous sect carefully arranged and ritualized a mass suicide in Chiery, Switzerland and a possibly related fire in Quebec, Canada.

As the police investigation progressed, information concerening the leader began to emerge; Luc Jouret, a 46 year old Canadian-Belgian. Jouret and his followers held fast to an unsusal combination of New Age beliefs and literalistic apocalypticism that included weapon stock-piling and survialist thinking. Several people have accused Jouret of brainwashing and compared his group to the Branch Davidians of Waco,Texas.

Police found at least 23 bodies of men, women and children at the samll farm in Chiery and at least 25 more at a mountian chalet 100 miles south of the city. Many of the victims were found in a concealed underground chapel lined with mirrors. The majority of them were wearing red, white and black cerimonial robes with their hands clasped in prayer. Some also had plastic bags over their heads. One former member stated, “We were under plastic as a symbol of the estrangement from nature. Members had to confess how they sinned against nature.”

However, there were some doubts that is was just a mass suicide. In addition to the presence of the plastic bags, some of the members’ hands were tied behind their backs and the autopsy report stated that some of the sects’ members died after taking ‘a powerful violent substance’ via injection. It is still difficult to know whether or not the members took the injection willingly or if it was forced upon them. It was also revealed that 20 of the members were found with bullet holes in their bodies. These findings have led officials to question whether the deaths were suicides, murders or a combination of both.

Jouret’s Quebec based sect is called ‘the Order of the Solar Temple.’ Government officials believe that the Canadian sect has an estimated membership of about 40-80 people. The discoveries in Switzerland came only hours after a duplex owned by the sect burned in a fatal fire north of Montreal. Four people, believed to be in contact with the Chiery members, died in the fire. At least 52 people believed to be connected to Jouret have been found dead in Canada and Switzerland.

Following the deaths in Canada and Switzerland, a reporter for the NY Times received three manuscripts via mail. These manuscripts stated, “ We are leaving this earth to find all the lucidity and freedom of a new dimension of truth, far from the hypocrisies and oppression of the world, in order to achieve the seeds of our future generation.” Through the media, Jouret and his group were receiving more scrutiny than needed. In 1994, to men allegedly connected with the sect were arrested for trying to by weapons for the group. An arrest warrant was issued for Jouret, but he apparently left Canada for Switzerland before it could be served. As this gun scandal unfolded, many of the members claimed that they were a part of the Acadamy of Research and Knowlegde of Higher Sciences (ARKH). This group was concerned with nutrition and hygiene.

Many comparisons have been made between this sect and the Branch Davidians. One side claims that they have nothing to do with each other because the Brance davidians are a Bible cult that came out of the religion of Christianity and the Order of the Solar does not seem to be considered a Bible group. But others see parallels in the two groups, such as the trafficking and stock-piling of weapons in the apparent expectation of the apocalypse.

After the body of Luc Jouret, founder and leader of the Solar Temple, was identified as one of those killed in the Oct.1994 fire, one of the mysteries has been solved. It was widely rumored and speculated that Jouret had orchestrated the mass suicide and escaped with the cults assets. But, it is now apparent that Jouret believed his own teachings about the end of the world.

The New York Times reported on October 14 that it had received documents from an unknown source detailing the reasons the cult members chose to die. One document set forth by the Times made a prediction that the end of the world was near and that the world would suffer the fate of Old Testament cities Sodom and Gomorrah. "It is with unfathomable love, pure joy, and no regret that we leave this world", the Times quoted one document saying. "Men, do not cry for our fate, but cry for your own." From the religious standpoint, Timothy Miller a renowned expert in the field of new religious movements had this to say, "We're still trying to make heads or tails of it. When dealing with groups like this, there are no apparent answers. The longer I study these groups, and I've been at it for 20 years, the less I can generalize about them. There are many different religious groups with different theologies, different belief systems, and different leaders." It is clear that with the events of Oct 1994, that dangers and violence may erupt more easily in small, unstable, and comparatively unknown religious groups according to one Italian scholar. Meanwhile, this case still lingers.

The article, Twisted Legacy, gives a slightly more personable account of the events occurring on October 5, 1994. It interviews some of the townspeople in Salvan Switzerland, where the tragedy occurred, getting their personal testimonies and ideas as to the cause and the type of people involved in the event. Many were shocked and could not understand how some of these people could have done just what they did.

One account of a woman named Dominique Bellaton stands out the most in my mind. When asking the townsmen, all said she was a sweet, innocent young lady who could never have hurt a fly. But, this is also the same woman who was wanted for the mother of a couple and their child in Canada. Is this the same person? Many of the people of Salvan refuse to think so. But others still feel as if they were duped and never really knew those that died at all.

And that is the sad, disturbing tale of the cult of the Solar Temple and the deaths of the 53 victims that made sense only to them. Chief Investigator Jean-Paul Martin made the comment, "It is hard to speak of logic in this affair." Who, after all, expected Luc Jouret, known leader of the religious sect, to be found among the dead? It was widely believed he ran off with the groups money until his body was identified. As far as an explanation goes, it is fairly certain Jouret was able to convince the members of the Solar Temple that the apocalypse was at hand and death by fire was the only was to cleanse each other's sins. The strange part of it all is that not all of the cults members even knew about the mass suicide, much less participated in it. 26 year old French golfer Patrick Vuarnet and his mother were both members of the cult to be excluded form the suicide. When asked, both said they had no ides why they had been excluded.