Copy
[Berlin coat of arms - crown and bear]
[registration
stamp Eisenberg 18 April 2001]
Berlin State Court
in the name of the people
hearing number: 27.O.764/00
announced on: 27 March 2001
Schmoekel,
chief justice secretary
In the legal dispute
Robert S. Minton,
33 North Fort Harrison Avenue,
Florida 33775 USA,
complainant,
represented by: attorney-at-law Johannes Eisenberg and colleague, Görlitzer Straße 74, 10997 Berlin,
vs.
1. Sabine Weber,
2. Scientology Kirche Deutschland e.V., represented by the board of directors president Helmut Blöhbaum and vice president Sabine Weber,
place of occupation for both:
Beichstraße 12. 80802 Munich,
3. Scientology Kirche Berlin e.V., represented by the board of directors Ute Koch, Monika Stamm-LoDico and Jochen Becker, Sponholzstraße 51-52, 12159 Berlin,
defendants,
represented by: attorney-at-law
Wilhelm Blumel and colleagues,
Bayerstraße 13/I, 80335 Munich,
(page 2)
civil chamber 27 of the Berlin State Court in 18589 Berlin (Charlottenburg),
Tegeler Weg 17-21, at the verbal hearing of 27 March 2001 by the presiding chairman
judge Mauck of the state court, judge Gollan of the state court and judge Becker of the municipal court have recognized as just:
1. The defendants are sentenced to pay a fine of up to 500,000 DM, for which can be substituted incarceration of up to six months, the latter in the cases of defendants 2) and 3) to be executed on the members of their board, for propagating, literally or analogously:
1. that which is printed in "Freiheit", issue with headline "Menschenrechtspreis" für Dritte-Welt-Ausbeuter (Human Rights Award for Third-World Exploiter),
p. 2, top of first column: "According to a criminal complaint against 'Robert Minton and accessories' for fraud, money laundering and forgery of documents, filed by the Republic of Nigeria on June 23rd, 2000 with the Attorney General in Geneva, Minton, between 1987 and 1993, following a secret fraudulent plan 'diverted several billion US dollars to the loss of the Republic of Nigeria... Robert Minton deposited the diverted money in various business and private numbered bank accounts'. After the Nigerian government asked a Geneva bank involved in the matter to freeze Minton's bank accounts and give information concerning accusations of money laundering 'Robert Minton met on May 20th, 2000 with the directors of that bank', the criminal complaint continues. 'To our knowledge he demanded the immediate transfer of his money and the destruction of documents.'"
Green shaded box on page 2, right column: "Wrocklage ... quasi-accomplice of a man who is charged with violating half the penal code".
2. that which is printed in the flyer: "Gnadenlose Geldgier" ("Ruthless Avarice")
Column 2: "According to the certified public accountants of the globally operating firm Arthur Andersen billions (!) of Nigerian oil dollars were simply stolen during the mentioned period of time. All in all it is said to be a matter of at least 12 billion US dollars. The ex-military dictators moved the money to foreign bank accounts by means of banks and cover companies. The unscrupulous wheeler-dealer Minton was involved in this money racket, after he and his accessories got hold of illegal inside knowledge to maximize their profits ... Presently there are a great number of investigations and hearings dealing with this gigantic fraud scandal which was carried out using 200 different bank accounts. Only recently, a further 'vanished' 1.31 billion DM were discovered and frozen by the Attorney General in Luxembourg."
(page 3)
3. that which is printed in Freiheit issue "Scientology in Schweden endgültig als Religion anerkannt" (Scientology Finally Recognized as a Religion in Sweden)
Page 2, 3rd column: "It comes as no surprise that even proven buddies of dictatorial killer regimes are welcome guests at the Office for the Protection of the Constitution - that they are 'against Scientology' seems to be all that matters. Caberta and the Hamburg Department of the Interior, the latter being responsible for the fight against crime, recently honored the American Robert Minton with a press conference, shortly after his close ties to an international money laundering racket of gigantic proportions became public. As African and English newspapers are presently reporting, the former Nigerian military dictatorship channeled several billion (!) US dollars to foreign bank accounts with the support of Minton and his accessories. This was part of a fraudulent deal that only superficially had to do with repaying foreign debts."
4. that which is printed in Freiheit issue "Also doch: Caberta nahm größere Geldsumme!" (It's true after all: Caberta Took Major Sums of Money)
Page 2, 5th column: "... According to a criminal charge filed by the Nigerian Republic with the attorney general of Geneva he was accused of defrauding the country of several hundred million US dollars during his business transactions with the former Nigerian military dictatorship. The complaint also accuses Minton of forgery of documents and money laundering."
2. The defendants each bear 1/3 of the costs of the legal dispute.
3. The decision is provisionally executable in the primary matter upon receipt of a security deposit of 100,000 DM and for 10% of each amount collected as expenses.
Facts of the Case
The complainant seeks a cease-and-desist of libelous statements propagated about him in written matter by the defendants.
(page 4)
Defendants 2) and 3) distribute the Scientology Organization's "Freiheit" magazine; defendant 1) appears as editor-in-chief of this paper in the German-speaking world.
The complainant was active as a middleman for the state of Nigeria from 1988 to 1993 in the buy-back of Nigeria's foreign debts. He represented companies which used money made available by the state of Nigeria for reducing debt and purchased debts of foreign credit banks at a fraction of their nominal worth. For this activity the complainant received a commission in the amount of 1 percent, a total of about 45 million dollars.
The complainant's activities were the subject of a committee of inquiry of the Nigerian Parliament in February, 2000, the final report of which concluded that there were no objections to the complainant's activities and which determined that the debt buy-backs occurred in a transparent and traceable manner and that the contractual agreements with the Nigerian Central Bank had been adhered to. The theme was also taken up by the press in subsequent months. The defendants also took up the matter in various (undated) issues of their magazine. They reported that the Republic of Nigeria had filed charges against the complainant on the 23rd of June 2000 at the attorney general's office in Geneva and they accused him of having cheated the country out of several hundred million dollars. He was said to have been accused of forging documents and of money-laundering. The complainant was said to have supported the Nigerian military dictatorship in diverting about 12 billion dollars to private foreign bank accounts. Reference was made to the details of the articles, submitted as attachments to the letter of complaint.
The complainant maintains that he is not guilty of anything. He said he was not being investigated. The reality was that the defendants were only concerned with ruining his reputation because he (page 5) financed legal proceedings in the USA by which the death of a member of the Scientology organization is to be cleared up. He believes that the defendants' reporting an alleged investigation about a charge against him would also be illicit because the defendants did not concurrently communicate that he disputed the accusations made against him, that Nigeria's parliamentary investigate committee had cleared him and that the criminal investigative authorities had not initiated search procedures nor issued a warrant on him. In no case, he said, should the defendants have been permitted to present the accusation based on an alleged charge as proven fact.
The complainant has applied
that the defendants be obliged, on penalty of a fine of up to 500,000 DM in the case of violation, alternatively detention, or detention of up to 6 months, to be enforced upon the defendants 2) and 3) on one of the members of the board of directors, to refrain from propagating, literally or analogously,
1. that which is printed in "Freiheit", issue with headline "Menschenrechtspreis" für Dritte-Welt-Ausbeuter (Human Rights Award for Third-World Exploiter),
p. 2, top of first column: "According to a criminal complaint against 'Robert Minton and accessories' for fraud, money laundering and forgery of documents, filed by the Republic of Nigeria on June 23rd, 2000 with the Attorney General in Geneva, Minton, between 1987 and 1993, following a secret fraudulent plan 'diverted several billion US dollars to the loss of the Republic of Nigeria... Robert Minton deposited the diverted money in various business and private numbered bank accounts'. After the Nigerian government asked a Geneva bank involved in the matter to freeze Minton's bank accounts and give information concerning accusations of money laundering 'Robert Minton met on May 20th, 2000 with the directors of that bank', the criminal complaint continues. 'To our knowledge he demanded the immediate transfer of his money and the destruction of documents.'"
Green shaded box on page 2, right column: "Wrocklage ... quasi-accomplice of a man who is charged with violating half the penal code".
2. that which is printed in the flyer: "Gnadenlose Geldgier" ("Ruthless Avarice")
Column 2: "According to the certified public accountants of the globally operating firm Arthur Andersen billions (!) of Nigerian oil dollars were simply stolen during the mentioned period of time. All in all it is said to be a matter of at least 12 billion US dollars. The ex-military dictators moved the money to foreign bank accounts by means of banks and cover companies. The unscrupulous wheeler-dealer Minton was involved in this money racket, after he and his accessories got hold of illegal inside knowledge to maximize their profits ... Presently there are a great number of investigations and hearings dealing with this gigantic fraud scandal which was carried out using 200 different bank accounts. Only recently, a further 'vanished' 1.31 billion DM were discovered and frozen by the Attorney General in Luxembourg."
(page 3)
3. that which is printed in Freiheit issue "Scientology in Schweden endgültig als Religion anerkannt" (Scientology Finally Recognized as a Religion in Sweden)
Page 2, 3rd column: "It comes as no surprise that even proven buddies of dictatorial killer regimes are welcome guests at the Office for the Protection of the Constitution - that they are 'against Scientology' seems to be all that matters. Caberta and the Hamburg Department of the Interior, the latter being responsible for the fight against crime, recently honored the American Robert Minton with a press conference, shortly after his close ties to an international money laundering racket of gigantic proportions became public. As African and English newspapers are presently reporting, the former Nigerian military dictatorship channeled several billion (!) US dollars to foreign bank accounts with the support of Minton and his accessories. This was part of a fraudulent deal that only superficially had to do with repaying foreign debts."
4. that which is printed in Freiheit issue "Also doch: Caberta nahm größere Geldsumme!" (It's true after all: Caberta Took Major Sum of Money)
Page 2, 5th column: "... According to a criminal charge filed by the Nigerian Republic with the attorney general of Geneva he was accused of defrauding the country of several hundred million US dollars during his business transactions with the former Nigerian military dictatorship. The complaint also accuses Minton of forgery of documents and money laundering."
The defendants applied to have the complaint dismissed.
They assert that the Republic of Nigeria had actually filed a charge based on the events in question which took place on 23 June 2001 against the complainant with the attorney general's office in Geneva and invoke as evidence the testimony of the attorney general's office or official information from that agency. Independent of the criminal valuation of the complainant's conduct, however, they say that their opinion of common fraud cannot be denied in reference to the complainant's buy-backs. (page 7) Finally they say the complainant gave the creditors false information as to the non-collectability of their debts by which means he allegedly caused them to sell at a fraction of their value. In this way, it was said, not only the creditors suffered loss, but so had the state of Nigeria, whose creditworthiness was said to have been decreased due to being represented as unable to pay. In that the debts were sold from one company to the next, the nominal value of the debts were said to have steadily increased. This was said to have raised the suspicion that the Nigerian Central Bank had made available larger amounts of money than the creditors had received and that the surplus amounts had been siphoned off to the advantage of the complainant or the country's government of the time. The statement contested by the complainant at 1) that he had been accused of violating half the penal code was said to be justified in the light of a state attorney's investigation of him - which is not disputed - by the state attorney's office of the Hamburg state court for bribery and soliciting favors because he was said to have granted a loan of 100,000 DM to an Interior Senator's department director.
The defendants believe the accusations published against the complainant are justified in consideration of the enormous amounts of money involved and authorized in light of public interest. In their research they relied upon like-sounding publications in the international press because they do not operate a private press corporation with its own archive and therefore would not be subject to the same standards of factuality as full-time journalists of other media.
Because of further proceedings of the parties, reference is made to the contents of the memoranda submitted by both parties at the attachments.
(page 8)
Basis of Decision:
The complaint is founded. The complainant has a claim against the defendants in accordance with sects. 823 para. 1, para. 2, analogous 1004 para. 1 S, 2 BGB in connection with Art. 1 para. 1, 2 para. 1 Basic Law and sects. 185 ff. StGB, to oblige them to not repeat the statements in dispute.
1. Regarding the defendants with consideration to complaint items 1) and 4) and distributing the text in dispute about the complainant allegedly having a charge filed against him by the Republic of Nigeria and describing the complainant as a man in the middle of a bog of gigantic commercial fraud who had been charged with violating half the penal code, their published statements were illegal, because the defendants - even if the charge had been filed - raised a suspicion that the complainant had done something against the law; the are not permitted to make this public without also going into exonerating circumstances to the complainant's favor.
Even if such an accusation would have been filed by the state against the complainant, the defendants in their publications are not permitted to take into view only a public interest in explaining and prosecuting any commercial crimes, but must also bear accountability for the complainant's personal rights guaranteed by Art. 1 paras. 1 and 2 of Basic Law. At most, so long as a suspicion exists that the complainant could have done business fraudulently, they may in the course of their reporting not name only the incriminating circumstances, but must also include those things which are in his favor. The defendants have omitted doing that. They have not made reference to the accusations already having been made the topic of an investigatory committee of the Republic of Nigeria whose final report (page 9) exonerated the complainant of any wrong-doing, but neither did they communicate that the complainant disputed the accusations being brought against him although the complainant had expressed his opinion in the media which was mentioned in the defendants' article and that these circumstances were known to the defendants at the time of publication.
Neither is the assertion justified that the complainant had been accused of violating half the criminal code because the complainant had granted a loan of 100 thousand DM to a department director so the Hamburg Interior Agency or that accusations of bribery or soliciting favor had arisen from this occasion. Apart from the fact that the article in dispute does not at all refer to the facts of the case, this suspicion is not allowed to be published according to the standards of the above-named principles, because it is so baseless as a foundation for the facts described by the complainants that any public interest, which must include the legal protection of the complainant, cannot be recognized. Neither have the complainants, in their response to the complaint, submitted a statement as to which official dealing the loan was supposed to be related or as how the criminal charge was supposed to be justified. Neither is there any cause to grant them additional time to comment upon the complainant's reply to make supplemental statements because such a position could have already followed with their reply to the complaint.
2. It is also just that the complainant protest the material stated in item 2), that he had been involved in juggling accounts or that in the course of this, money in the amount of about 12 billion dollars had been moved to foreign accounts in a fraudulent manner.
(page 10)
As concerns this the defendants cannot claim the protection of freedom of opinion guaranteed by Art. 5, para. 1 of Basic Law, because just by using the expression "juggling accounts" they have created the impression of how they evaluate the debt buy-back operation in which the complainant indisputably participated. In their leaflet though, they did not just make reference to debt buy-backs, but also to on-going transactions which, just be the way they were presented, implied a connection with the debt buy-back because "money had been used in those transactions which it appeared had been meant to buy back debts." Accusing the complainant of juggling accounts in that connection alone is illicit in that it can be concluded that the complainant had something to do with the situation.
In stating that the complainant had cooperated in funneling state money out of the country to the good of former members of government, the accused are lacking any proof. The alleged charge by the state of Nigeria which they referred to could justify suspicion, but not to the doubt-free conclusion arrived at by the defendant.
Contrary to the opinion represented by the defendants, nothing further can be concluded about the complainant allegedly being involved in fraudulent juggling of accounts even though that statement may have been made by other organs of the press without the complainant taking measures against them. In the article published by the "Hamburger Morgenpost" on 20 May 2000 entitled "Die Milliarden des Diktators" ("The Dictator's Billions") and in the article published in "Der Spiegel" news magazine on 11 September 2000, "Charmanter Mohamed" there is no mention of the person of the complainant. The rest of the English-language articles upon which the defendants rely cannot be taken into consideration in the standards of sect. 184 GVG. (page 11) Above this the defendants have not demonstrated that the complainant had any knowledge of these articles or that he had the opportunity to take a stand against their content.
3. For the above named grounds, the defendants are also prohibited from distributing the statements in dispute described in complaint item 3), that according to reports in the African and English press he is involved in international money-laundering fraud of gigantic proportions whereby the former Nigerian military dictators were supported in having several billion dollars funneled into overseas bank accounts. The defendants themselves are responsible for having spread these libelous imputations, regardless of the circumstances, in that they have distributed the reports without having maintained distance from their content (see Prinz/Peters, media law, Randnummber 35).
The decision of cost is based on sect. 91 para. 1 ZPO. The decision on the provisional executability is in accordance with sect. 709 p. 1 ZPO.
/sig/ Mauck
/sig/ Becker
Judge Gollan of the state court is not able to sign due to being on vacation. /sig/ Mauck
Issued
(signature)
(Seal of the Berlin state court)
Justice
employee
Legal Decision
Minton wins
Scientology Loses
Berlin, Germany
March 27, 2001
on-the-spot accountNewsgroups: de.soc.weltanschauung.scientology
Subject: Minton vs. Weber etc
Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001Despite being sick I dragged myself off to the state court to see the trial hearing in matters of Minton vs. Weber, etc. and it was a good show, I'm glad I took the day off :)
Attending were another Scientology critic, Scientology Germany President Helmuth Bloehbaum, Scientology Berlin President Ute Koch (she holds other offices too), Attorney Bluemel, a guy who probably is a Scientologist but whose name I don't know, and a well-dressed woman. I suppose she was either a journalist or on staff with Minton's lawyer, Johannes Eisenberg, because she stayed for the next hearing but did not sit next to Eisenberg.
In the court sat the transcriptionist, the judicial trio (a gray-haired chairman who listened patiently to everything and two assessors, one of whom was very, very young). Sitting back were two more, younger people, I suppose they were law students. I stupidly did not note the name of the chairman, I think it was "Glogovski" or something.
Then things got started ...
The Court:
A "foreign security" was done, that is a security deposit when certain non-EU countries go to court. If I understood correctly, then that was already done.Bluemel:
request to adjourn, only received the last memorandum March 20
difficult case
difference of opinion with the Hamburg state attorney's office
The Parliament matter (namely where the Nigerian Parliament determined that everything was upright) would have to be researched
a limit on memos would also suffice, so that he would not have to travel to Berlin again.Eisenberg:
Scientology made the charges themselves
then reported on their own proceedings
You weren't supposed to spread libel first and then do your homework
[I had to chuckle here!]
he said the case was ready for a decision
government documents showed that the campaign against Minton was running like a chess game according to LRH policy
Scientology should not get records access.Bluemel:
Need records access because there are state proceedings against Caberta to clear her of the bribery.
he hoped to find the connection to the flow of money.
He wanted to know when the money flowed in order to build a connection.Court:
- considering whether there would be a limit on memoranda
- no indications that Minton was involved in juggling accounts
- Minton reduced Nigeria's debt
- Minton was not skimming money
- Scientology was not a "citizen's initiative." It was said it was not an "intelligence agency," but there was more behind it than met the eye. It was said to be a large organization with many possible options. That would include having to listen to opponents. Would have to get acquainted with the report of the investigative committee.Eisenberg:
There was no connection to dictator Abacha, since Minton's activities ended in February 1993.
Minton had not just gone and sold the debts to someone who was sitting there waiting for him. There was actually a market, you had to get the rates from Reuters.
Scientology's campaign was perverse and poisoned the environment.Bluemel:
He said the charge was not perverse. [The p-word made him angry.]
He said the thing with Caberta stunk to high heaven
He said Caberta hung like a puppet from Minton.
He said it had to do with her job because she supposedly said in the USA that it was all about Scientology.
He said the debts included a parity clause. He said individual creditors asked whether Minton worked for Nigeria, which he contested, therefore = fraud.
Mr. Raschid said everything was upright because he was in the middle of it.
He gave a charge of the Nigerian state against Minton. To that Eisenberg said that nobody had ever seen the original, just this translation.
Bluemel said he was sure that Greenland (company) also was funneling money out of the country.
Scientology had the right to respond and payback was heck, or similar German idiomatic equivalent. With no obligation to research first.Eisenberg:
He didn't mean the charge was "perverse," but that the entire campaign was.
He said this was not a matter of responding to an attack. For instance Minton had not expressed himself in Zehlendorf and OSA-FREIHEIT was distributed there.
He said the accusations were not factual, just derogatory and abusive.
Only suspicion of accepting favors, not bribery, nevertheless the word "bribery" was written time and time again. [Bluemel was also using that word!]
Bluemel should give better advice to his client. Bluemel angrily rejected that notion.Bluemel:
He said it was not his mission to prove that Minton had bribed anybody and it was not a smear tactic.
He said there were 100 articles against Minton and only three of those supported Minton's standpoint.Bluemel also mentioned two more things at one time or another:
- Dreksler was said to have been ruined by suspicion and never reinstated [not true!] and people just let Minton do whatever he wanted
- In Munich garbage men were fired for accepting 25 DM and some of these had been confirmed by the Labor CourtThe court said it would decide in the course of the day whether there would be additional court memoranda submitted. That was it, people left. The next case was waiting outside, Stroebele vs. Springer Verlag, Stroebele's attorney: Eisenberg :-) Unfortunately Stroebele was not there.
Tilman
I forgot one important point. Minton's attorney mentioned that Scientology's attorney had called the Hamburg state attorney to tell him when Minton was coming to Hamburg, and asked them to please arrest him. He mentioned that obviously Minton had been under surveillance by scientology.
Scientology's attorney later admitted the call, and claimed that there was a double standard in the treatment of scientologists and scientology critics, and used the Dreksler case as example. He did not elaborate on the surveillance of Minton.
Tilman Hausherr [SP5.55] Entheta * Enturbulation * Entertainment
http://home.snafu.de/tilman/scientology_ger.html
photos from Clearwater:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Oracle/4497/clearwater2000
UPS and Scientology doing business together?
Berlin, Germany
February 1, 2001
SWR 2Consumer protection advocates believe there is dubious cooperation between United Parcel Service (UPS) and the Scientology sect. A Stuttgart training researcher has collected some evidence to that effect.
A UPS attorney, however, applied for a temporary restraining order in court. The reason was said to be that this was not expression of opinion, but an illicit assertion of fact which could harm business.
At a hearing in the Berlin State Court, however, the UPS attorney was defeated on all points.
Der Tagesspiegel
UPS
It may be said that the parcel company provided help to the sect
akr
The "Aktion Bildungsinformation" consumer advocate organization may continue to assert that the UPS strengthens the finances and capacity of the Scientology sect. The Berlin State Court overturned an application for a temporary restraining order yesterday which the UPS had effected against statements to that effect by the chairman of the organization, Eberhard Kleinmann. The consumer advocate's accusations were based on items including donations which UPS had made to Scientology organizations. Thomas Brach, the UPS attorney, said yesterday that it had not been clear to UPS that the organization maintained connections to Scientology. While court did not consider it had proof that UPS knowingly supported Scientology-aligned organizations, neither did it find Kleinmann's statements impermissible in light of freedom of opinion.
Scientology sues in case of Berlin Police
From: "DIE WELT"
July 8, 1998Scientologists lodge complaint against state administration
State senate could be faced with a dilemmaby RALF SCHULER
The mail from Munich came late. On Tuesday of last week, the attorney from the Scientology organization had already applied for a temporary restraining order "against the state of Berlin, as represented by the Senate administration for the interior," yet nobody at the Berlin Administrative court knew anything about the process until last weekend. Now the nine page document is at hand, and it requests that, in the future, the Senate abstain from "making or propagating a statement, literally or figuratively, that the police director, Otto D., is allegedly a member" of Scientology. (Az.: 27A240.98)
The events preceding this action are easily related: on March 22 of this year, an anonymous letter-writer accused Otto D., who was the director of police operations at the time, of being a member of the psycho- organization. Only ten days later, the local office for domestic intelligence confirmed the allegation by reason of a list with the names of 15 Scientologists on it, the author of whom was an undercover agent. The list was said to have had the name of police director Otto D. on it. The application submitted by the Munich Scientology attorneys could create a serious dilemma for the Senate. If the state administration does not quietly withdraw its allegations against Otto D., who has since then been suspended from service, then it will have to present the proof of its assertion without risking the source or even revealing who it is.
That would be theoretically possible, says Wolfgang Wieland, an attorney who is on the Interior committee for the Green Party. "It would depend upon whether or not the credibility of the source could be established by either a long-term period of cooperation or some other means," he said. In the state administration [Innenverwaltung], which has not yet been addressed in writing on the matter and therefore has not expressed an opinion, it is secretly hoped that the whole situation will not become a primary issue. The court could reject the application on the grounds that Scientology does not have a "need for legal protection" in the case. Wieland also believes that there would be no damage done to good name of the organization if they happened to have a member by the name of Otto D.
Scientology does not see things that way. The psycho-group wants to use the complaint to dispute the accusation that it is continually trying to infiltrate society. "Therefore we cannot be indifferent to a high-ranking official being fraudulently accused of being one of us," said speaker Georg Stoffel. Completely apart from whether the court decides to dispute this situation, the case has yet another, by far, more piquant dimension. A judge of the Administrative Court is also on domestic intelligence's Scientology list, and he denies its validity just as vigorously as Otto D. does. That judge is responsible for questions of asylum, and is therefore not in the picture as far as dealings with Scientology go. He would not be reassigned in any case.
From Wieland's perspective, the Senate is now in a precarious position in its surveillance of the sect. "It has documented a belief that the sect is dangerous, yet when a high-ranking official is suspected, does nothing because there is no legal basis." Department of Justice speaker Svenja Schroder confirmed the existence of the dilemma, "There is nothing to justify the taking of professional measures." Membership in Scientology is not against the law.
url
http://www.welt.de/cgi-bin/out.pl?url=/regional/berlin/980708/0708b104.htm
Acquittal for Berlin Police Scientologist
http://www.taz.de/~taz/980418.taz/ba_T980418.196.html
From: "taz"
April 18, 1998By Bernhard Potter
The special appeals court (*Kammergericht) sees no transgression against the data protection law in the handling of police data on the computers of the sect.
The year-long legal proceedings against a criminal investigations commissioner, who was accused of passing on police data to the Scientology sect, has ended with an acquittal. The court granted the appeal of Volker K., and decided that a transgression of the data protection law could not be ascertained. Nevertheless, Interior Department officials are further investigating as to whether the police official, presently suspended from service, will receive disciplinary action for possible violation of duty, it was revealed yesterday.
The case of the Scientologist, Volker K., made a sensation in 1994. The chief commissioner had, in four cases, entered personal police data into a Scientology computer, using the sect's own software. Besides that K. had admitted to passing out Scientology surveys at recruitment meetings. The Bavarian Secretary of the Interior, Gunter Beckstein (CSU) had cited the Volker K. case as an example of the psycho-cults efforts to infiltrate the police - an assertion that was rejected by Scientology as "unsurpassed ridiculousness."
In the first two cases K. had been given a fine of 16,000 and 12,000 marks, respectively, for illicit release of data. These decisions are now vacated by the court, because they are based on a "faulty application of the Berlin data protection law," according to the basis of the decision. Even if K. worked with personal data, what was missing, in accordance with the law, was the punishable "passing on" of the data to a third party. The court also had considerations as to whether or not K. acted with premeditation. His objection, that he had only forgotten to delete the personal data on the Scientology computer, could not be disproved.
In spite of the acquittal, the case is not yet legally over for K. The Interior attorney is still investigating as to whether the interrupted disciplinary process would be again taken up during the course of the proceedings, stated the speaker for the administration, Isabell Kalbitzer. It has still not been determined, for the police, whether the dealing with sensitive data on a Scientology computer would constitute a "violation of duty."
In an [separate] investigation of the district attorney against the police director of a police district, Otto D., the investigation, according to a statement of the justice, is "undecided for the time being." Scientology has stated that D. has never been a member of the organization. They further stated that the work of sect commissioners of the churches and the Interior administration has created "a sick climate of hysteria and denunciation."
Note:
* "Kammergericht" is called "Oberlandesgericht" in other parts of Germany, which has been rendered as "State Superior Court." (Berlin in one of three "city-states" in Germany.)
Turning a Profit
TAZ, Freitag 3.3.1995
Federal Civil Court (Bundesverwaltungsgericht): Scientology must report as a business
From: "TAZ"
Friday, March 3, 1995Berlin/Hamburg (dpa) - In Hamburg, the controversial Scientology organization must report its commercial activity as a business. The Federal Civil Court in Berlin confirmed the corresponding judgment of the Superior Civil Court (Oberverwaltungsgericht) of Hamburg. It rejected, as not permissible, a communication made on Thursday in regard to complaints by the organization against the inadmissibility of the appeal, with which both of the Hamburg decisions should have be reversed. This is the final decision in the eleven year old legal battle between the Scientology Church Hamburg and two district officials (As: Bverwg 1 B 205 and 206.93 of February 16, 1995.
According to the Superior Civil Court decision of July 1993, Scientology must report the sale of books and courses as profit. The Federal Civil Court now declared that the obligation to report a profit of a religious community after the conclusion of a decision between the basic right of religious freedom and equal-weighted rights, which should be concerned with an exploitation of profit, may be pronounced. With respect to the mentioned activities, Scientology is said to be partaking "in the profit-oriented goals of commercial life", even if they regard themselves as "an element of the practice of relgion."
Scientology presents itself publicly as a religious community. In opposition to that the Interior Ministers Conference sees the organization as an economically criminal association.
"Scientology Church"
Ministers have to report for draft
Berlin, Germany
May 26, 1984
Mannheimer Morgen
Berlin. (AP) Adherents of the "Scientology Church," according to a decision by the Federal Administration Court in Berlin, also have to do military service in the Defense Forces, even if they are employed inside their own community as clergy. With this decision, the federal court dismissed the complaint of a 28-year-old man who wanted to be exempt from military service because he aspired to the position of Scientology minister. In the basis the judge supported his decision on a 1982 judgment from the Darmstadt Administrative Court in which it was said that "Scientology" was not a religious denomination. As a result, neither could there be a religious office such as those of the major churches. Instead, "Scientology" was more of a "philosophical community" for which religion made only a "fringe appearance," stressed the Darmstadt judge.