Subject: Madrid Trial in "El País"
In 1982, OSA staged a faked arrest in the Madrid airport
to keep Per Gardstrom from revealing certain financial
information to the Spanish authorities.
They goofed the floof; the police were alerted and began
an investigation into what appeared to be a kidnapping.
This was the incident that *started* the whole legal mess
in Spain. Investigating this incident, the authorities
grasped one end of the tangled string of Scientology's
crimes and its abuse of its members, and pulled and pulled,
and now there's a chance that we'll see the whole thing
unravel. I hope Scientology doesn't succeed in buying off
the testimony of Juan Caban, who I'm told is the only one
of the original plaintiffs that has not settled.
Here's an unsigned narrative, posted anonymously to a.r.s
back in 1995, that explains.
-- S.E. Nahj
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Subject: What's Happening in Madrid
CRIMINAL PROCEEDINGS IN SPAIN AGAINST SCIENTOLOGY
Curious is the Church of Scientology in all of its guises,
apparently only experiencing life as a series of motivators: as
victims, ever the recipients of injustice and of prejudice.
However, by their own "spiritual" creed, could they have done
something to "pull it in"?
What follows is a short synopsis of the true events leading up
to the present judicial proceedings which are in progress in Spain.
They have been brought against the Church of Scientology
International, Dianetics, Narconon, RTC and other scientological
organizations, their agents and responsible executives.
The beginning of the summary of the criminal proceedings in
Spain date to approximately early 1982. At that time the ex-
Commanding Officer for Iberia, Per Gardstrom was apparently
"arrested" as he arrived in Madrid airport from Copenhagen. He was
detained by three plainclothes officers. Lurking nearby was a
woman, recently mentioned in a statement supposedly written by the
OSA and published on the Internet . Montserrat Aguilera, at that
time the President of the local scientology-dianetics organization
in Spain and head of OSA in that country. With her was Kurt
Weiland, her senior in the OSA for Europe at that time and until
recently, head of OSA Internationally. Gardstrom had arrived in
Spain to deliver certain information to the Spanish authorities.
This concerned the alleged illegal exportation of money from Spain
by the sect to their European bank accounts.
Friends of Gardstrom who expected his arrival were witness to
his arrest. They quickly attempted to contact the Spanish police in
order to learn why he had been detained and to assist in his
release. They contacted the various police agencies, the Guardia
Civil, and even obtained the help of the Swedish consulate in
Madrid in their efforts to locate him and to obtain his release.
Later that day they were shocked to find that Gardstrom had in fact
NOT been arrested by any Spanish police agency whatsoever!
It was therefore assumed possible that he had been kidnapped,
and the police followed up on this possibility by opening an
investigation into his disappearance.
The following day, Gardstrom called his friends in Spain. He
told them that after having been interrogated by police officers at
the airport he had been summarily deported from that country as
"persona non grata".
However, the Spanish police, after investigating his arrival
and departure, ascertained , by checking their arrival and
departure cards and by interrogating the airline crews, that
Gardstrom had boarded the following flight back to Copenhagen,
together with Kurt Weiland, next to whom he was seated. His
"arrest" had been a farce perpetrated by the OSA, the purpose of
which had been to frighten the people who were expecting him.
The result was an opened police investigation that would, 14
years later, result in the criminal proceeding now under way.
An amazing win for Kurt Weiland whose "bright idea" began the
almost decade long investigation.
Some years earlier, following Hubbard's apparent disappearance
from the sect, thousands of its former members were expelled in a
years-long "purge" of its dedicated and long-time militants.
One of the victims of this purge was Hubbard's "Second Deputy
Commodore," William Brandon Robertson, known within the Sea
Organization as "Capt. Bill". Pursued by agents of the sect,
declared as a "Suppressive Person" by their "justice" system and
fearing for his life, he had made his way to Spain where he shortly
founded, along with 18 others, the Iglesia Universal de
Cienciologia in Spain, an alternative which he projected for those
who had been expelled from the sect but wished to continue to study
or apply Hubbard's philosophy, while not agreeing with the sect's
so called "ethics" policies.
This incorporation, although completely legal and guaranteed
as a right under the Spanish Constitution, was not considered as
such by the power hungry young usurpers known at that time as the
"Watchdog Committee", made up of members of the CMO who had taken
over control of the sect, headed by David Miscavige and, at that
time, Pat and Annie Broeker. Their response to this action was a
more than decade long conspiracy to undermine and destroy the
aspirations of the dissenters to obtain their own religious
freedom. The sect would do this regardless of the methods
employed, regardless of the legality of their actions.
Shortly following the creation of the Iglesia Universal de
Cienciologia, one of the members of this dissident group was jailed
in Germany due to false charges brought against her by the local
scientology organization. The arrest was arranged to take place in
the middle of a peaceful meeting of ex-scientologists in the city
of Munich. The arrest took place on a Saturday evening, so that she
would have to spend the whole weekend in jail before being able to
obtain release by the judge the following Monday. This was one of
Kurt Weiland's successes.
The following week, Pedro Lerma, known as "Petrus", of
Madrid, Spain, another of the founding members of the Iglesia
Universal de Cienciologia of Spain and who had, on his own, created
a center for drug rehabilitation and who had refused to permit his
center to be taken over by the new masters of the sect found
himself jailed on false charges and sent to the prison at
Carabanchel. Days later, after much difficulty on the part of his
family and friends to raise funds, he was released pending trial.
He would live for almost 6 years under the threat of prison, until
his case came to be viewed and sentenced in 1990. He was defiled in
the press and on the media by agents of the sect. When the case was
tried, he was exonerated of all charges, the falsity of which
pointed directly to the operatives of the sect in Spain. The
sentence was handed down by the 16th Section of the Provincial
Audience of Madrid in October of that year , Sentence No. 639.
Among the many data proven in this trial, the sentence includes
findings about the motivations of scientology which are
surprisingly anomalous to the friendly, "public relations"
appearance given by the PR experts of the sect:
".... which is none other than that of "making
money and making more money", and to which end they put into
practice graft, extortion, kidnappings and sequester, theft and
robbery of documents, falsifications, larceny, false accusations
and denouncements, obstruction of justice, defrauding of the public
treasury, Social Security and a countless list of unlimited illicit
activities from which we should not exclude espionage ......"
This was another of Kurt Weiland's successes.
The judge who had been duped into having Lerma falsely
imprisoned was D. Jose Maria Vazquez Honrubia. This judge wasn't to
readily forget their misuse of justice as the sect would later
realize.
Weiland couldn't help but telephone to Robertson in Germany to
tell him how he had had Lerma jailed in Spain. And he let him know
that John Caban, one of the dissidents assisting Robertson in
Spain, would have a surprise waiting for him when he returned to
that country.
Before returning to Spain, they contacted with Per Gardstrom,
who had been removed from his position in the sect in Spain, and
who had been forced to do hard labor in sect's "Rehabilitation
Projects Force" as their psychological reorientation camps were
called (redefinition of terms).
Months earlier Gardstrom had contacted and visited with the
one of the dissidents in Spain, staying at his home for various
days, ingratiating himself with his former friend and his family
while at the same time attempting to extract personal information
from them which he could pass to his seniors in the sect for their
destructive and illicit operations.
After the arrest perpetrated in Munich, Gardstrom offered to
take documents to Spain which he wished to present to the
authorities there. He alleged that these documents would
demonstrate the illicit removal of moneys from Spain during the
time that he was in command of the organizations there.
About a week later, the infamous "Madrid Airport Incident"
took place and the sect's troubles in Spain began.
It was again a great success of Mr. Weiland, who then came to
the US to participate in the harrassment of David Mayo in
California.
Actually, this was to be the second time that Scientology ran
aground in Spain, since, a decade previously, after the death of
Francisco Franco, the dictator of that country, they were under
suspicion due to the constant entries to their ports by the
"Apollo", then the flagship of the Sea Organization.
As court records of the present case demonstrate, they later
obtained the apparent illicit removal of reports from official
government archives, although knowledge of these activities was not
to come to the attention of the courts until the possible criminal
actions involved had proscribed in law.
After the incident at the Madrid airport, detectives hired by
the sect continued in their unconstitutional persecution of the
Spanish dissidents, spending, according to a public notarized
document, sworn to by an the ex-president of the Dianetica
association in Madrid and OSA in charge, over 10 million pesetas
of association funds in only one year. The sole purpose of the
expenditure was to attempt to find or to fabricate some charges
with which they could put one of the dissidents in jail.
During this time and in the following years the sect
continued to promise undeliverable states to unsuspecting victims,
especially those who had children who were addicted to drugs in
some form. This would later come to be known when over 100
individuals presented formal accusations against the sect for some
sort or other of fraud. It was found that these people had not come
forward previously due to fear of reprisals from the sect. They had
been "handled".
Of the over 100 accusations filed in the case against the
scientology organizations and their responsible executives, more
than 50 were for theft or larceny. There were approximately 20
accusations of sub-standard sanitary conditions in their Narconons.
About 15 persons filed accusations of having received threats of
one kind or another from the sect. The accusations of coercion
numbered almost 20. The accusations found within this case include,
moreover, those of false arrest or false accusation, slander, theft
with intimidation, professional intrusion, evasion of capital as
well as crimes against fundamental and constitutional rights of
individuals and the right to privacy.
The scientology organizations involved in these accusations
include the Dianetics Associations, Narconon, the Church of
Scientology International, Druganon, SOCO, the Sea Organization,
Flag Services Org.
In 1988, numerous members of the sect, along with the
president of the International Church of Scientology were arrested.
After their interrogation, those deemed as responsible under the
laws of Spain were arraigned. Since Spanish law contemplates the
ultimate responsibility of the directors and executives of an
organization for the crimes which could be committed by agents and
members of that organization, Heber Jentszch and other leading
members of the officialdom of the sect were charged, and most were
released on bail.
Jentszch obtained his release apparently by the intervention
of Jessica Parcell, long time member of the sect, who remembered an
influential Spanish boyfriend from her youth after being contacted
by the special operations group working on obtaining Jentszch's
release. Her phone call to this now influential personage along
with a program worked out by the legal consultants of the Sect in
Spain obtained Jentszch's release from the prison of Carabanchel.
The boyfriend is now being investigated.
A curious observation can be made that Jentszch was held in
the very same prison in which the sect over which he presides had
Pedro Lerma unjustly incarcerated almost six years previously. The
conditions in the prison at that time were considerably worse than
in 1988. The judge who signed the order for his imprisonment was D.
Jose Maria Vazquez Honrubia, the same judge who had been duped by
the sect to have Lerma unjustly jailed.
During the next couple of years, the sect began contacting the
individuals who had formulated accusations against them, in most
instances reaching some sort of economic agreement with each, and
requiring that these individuals retract their accusations.
Approximately 33 of these retractions admitted doing so because of
an economic settlement of some sort, constituting a most obvious
admission of guilt on the part of the sect that the charges brought
against them by these individuals were true.
Despite their efforts to submerge the courts in paper and to
dissuade the multitude of litigants from continuing with their
accusations, the course of justice continued on.
Attempts to illegally investigate the judges and others
present in the case were doomed as well to failure, the judicial
police having caught the detectives and attorneys of the sect
"inflagrante" while they were conducting an illegal investigation
into the private and personal lives of their "enemies".
In the fall of 1988, Caban, one of the plaintiffs present in
the scientology case, was attacked by three alleged
"ex-scientologists" outside his place of work. The attackers, now
awaiting trial for attempted homicide, were Alberto Suarez and
another individual, who had connections to the International
Justice Chief of Scientology, and the very same woman referred to
in the article recently released by the OSA, Montserrat Aguilera,
ex-president of the Civil Dianetics Association and OSA operative
in Spain. Aguliera is as well one of the accused parties in the
criminal case against Scientology. This case is to come to trial
early in January of 1996 and is thought to have definite
connections to the larger case against the sect for which no trial
date has yet been set.
The scientologists, having played all their tricks, one after
another, have found that they will go to trial after all. And they
have begun preparing the "public-relations groundwork" previous to
not appearing in court when the case comes to trial. A recent
scathing edition of "Etica y Libertad" (Ethics and Freedom), edited
in Spain by the sect, attacks the honor and ethical conduct of the
Spanish judicial system in such a way as to make obvious that
Jentszch has no intention of returning to the Spanish jails.
Perhaps Miscavige will go on his behalf.
Their buildings in Madrid are up for sale.
From: S. E. Nahj <senahj@my-deja.com>
Date: Wed, 07 Feb 2001
Date: 12 Nov 1995 05:55:19 +0100
[Note: The
Scientology®
organization has at best estimate approximately
45,000 to 50,000 followers world wide -- contrary to the 8 million figure
that the organization has been claiming for the past few years or so.
While that number continues to drop (thanks in part to the Internet) few
of the remaining followers are even aware of the unending series of police
raids, indictments, and prison terms their leaders and fellow cultists are
subjected to routinely. Few are allowed to know about their organization's
criminal history, or its current racketeering activities. Even fewer of
the cult's remaining followers are privy to their messiah's written
policies which dictates the criminal behavior that keeps getting their
organization raided (see Xenu.NET for
suitable references of Scientology policy) Scientology management
is the problem, not the thousands of honest believers who are good,
honest citizens; themselves victims of Scientology - flr]
The name "Narconon"® is trademarked to the Scientology organization through one of their many front groups. The name "Scientology"® is also trademarked to the "Church" of Scientology. Neither this web page, nor this web site, nor any of the individuals mentioned herein assisting to educate the public about the dangers of the Narconon scam are members of or representitives of the Scientology organization.
E-Mail Fredric L. Rice / The Skeptic Tank