http://www.newsunlimited.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,80482,00.html
====================
France is launching an urgent inquiry into how prosecution documents
came to be shredded in a case against the controversial group
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Files destroyed in Scientology case
Jon Henley in Paris
France's continuing battle with the Church of Scientology took a
bizarre twist yesterday as the justice ministry announced an inquiry
into the mysterious destruction of more than 3.5 tonnes of evidence
against the organisation held in a Marseille courthouse.
According to the state prosecutor the evidence, including dozens of
sealed files, was apparently shredded through the negligence of a
court clerk, not as a deliberate attempt to affect the outcome of a
case against several Scientology leaders in the south of France.
But the incident follows the suspicious disappearance last year of one
and a half volumes of a 10-volume mass of evidence against the church
in an almost identical case in Paris.
The office of the prime minister, Lionel Jospin, issued an immediate
statement: "The question must once again be asked as to whether
certain services of the state have not been infiltrated by sects. Such
a question cannot afford to wait long for an answer."
The Marseille documents - including financial statements and profiles
of Scientology members - were destroyed last August, supposedly as
part of a clear-out of the court's archives, but the loss was revealed
only this week. The files related to an investigation opened in 1990
against seven Scientology leaders in Marseille and Nice who are due to
stand trial later this month accused of fraud and illegally posing as
doctors.
Jean-Michel Pesenti, a lawyer representing a former Scientologist who
brought the case, said: "At the very least, this is suspicious. It's
too much of a coincidence.
"Fortunately most of the documents on which the prosecution case is
based are safe, but Scientologists could well apply to have the trial
postponed because of this."
"If this is a genuine mistake it is unpardonable in itself," said
Olivier Morice, a lawyer representing plaintiffs in the Paris case.
"But it could also be an attempted infiltration by Scientologists who,
using completely inadmissable methods, may have found a way to ensure
these documents disappeared."
Unlike the United States, France and several other European countries,
including Germany, refuse to recognise Scientology as a religion.
Founded in 1954 by a late American science fiction writer, L Ron
Hubbard, the Los Angeles-based organisation claims more than 8m
members worldwide, including 4,000 in France.
One of its main teachings is that the human race's problems are due to
disembodied souls brought to the planet millions of years ago. Church
members submit to personality tests, and have to pay to take expensive
"purification courses". Well known members include the Hollywood stars
Tom Cruise and John Travolta. Scientology was described as a sect in a
1996 French parliamentary report and appears on a list of 173 groups
under government surveillance to check the activities of cults and
sects in France.
But the organisation's leaders claimed an important victory in July,
when the French supreme court ruled that it did not have the authority
to decide whether Scientology was a religion. The court upheld an
earlier verdict that acquitted nine Scientology members of corruption
and theft.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 1999
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