The homeland of legendary church reformer Martin Luther said over the weekend it will seek to ban the Church of Scientology – an organization considered to be in conflict with Germany’s constitution. High level German officials, including all 16 state interior ministers, agreed to give the nation’s domestic intelligence agency the job of preparing necessary information to ban the organization, which is considered by most Christians a cult, according to The Associated Press. The ministers, including federal Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, ...

I'm going to take you back to my early days as a lawyer. It was the mid-to-late 1970s. I was working at Eddie Goodman's firm, Goodmans. David Stockwood (for my money one of the top civil litigators in Toronto for the past 30-plus years) ran the litigation department. For some reason he trusted me to handle the litigation for an upstart, feisty little paper that was still growing, the Toronto Sun. It had hungry journalists and none was hungrier – and ...

Attorney General Abbott Charges Foreclosure Rescue Firm With Operating Unlawful Scam Court freezes assets of Foreclosure Assistance Solutions HOUSTON – Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott today charged a business with operating an unlawful foreclosure rescue scam that targeted struggling Texas homeowners. As a result, the 408th District Court issued a temporary restraining order and froze assets belonging to three businessmen who organized the scheme. According to court documents, the defendants fraudulently advertised that they could save homeowners from imminent foreclosures. The ...

A Belgian prosecutor recommended that the Los Angeles-based Church of Scientology stand trial on charges of fraud and extortion, after a 10-year investigation. The prosecutor, Jean-Claude Van Espen, said that up to 12 people from the church should face charges and that his inquiry had concluded that Scientology’s Brussels-based Europe office and its Belgian missions had conducted unlawful practices in medicine, violated privacy laws and used illegal business contracts. The Church of Scientology said it would fight the charges.

The Belgian authorities have indicted the Belgian chapter of the Church of Scientology, the European headquarters of the Church, as well as 12 of its leading members. According to the office of Public Prosecutor Jean-Claude Van Espen Scientology is a criminal organization which has committed several crimes including extortion, fraud, violations of the trade law, violations of the privacy law and the illegal practice of medicine. On 30 September 1999, 120 Belgian police officers raided 25 Scientology offices and seized tons ...

The chance is real that several leading figures in the Church of Scientology in Belgium could be issued with court summonses. The Federal Judicial Authorities plan to prosecute the church for being a criminal organisation that has defrauded its members. The judicial authorities opened their investigation into the Scientology movement in Belgium back in 1997, after having received tip-offs from ex-members of the church. All aspects of the Scientology Church's practises were gone through with a fine tooth comb. Now the ...

A Belgian prosecutor on Tuesday recommended that the U.S.-based Church of Scientology stand trial for fraud and extortion, following a 10-year investigation that concluded the group should be labeled a criminal organization. Scientology said it would fight the criminal charges recommended by investigating prosecutor Jean-Claude Van Espen, who said that up to 12 unidentified people should face charges. Van Espen's probe also concluded that Scientology's Brussels-based Europe office and its Belgian missions conducted unlawful practices in medicine, violated privacy laws and ...

Moscow: A Russian court has ordered a center operated by the Scientology movement in St. Petersburg to be shut down, city prosecutors said Thursday, after accusing the organization of unlicensed teaching and other activities. The St. Petersburg City Court ordered the Scientology center closed after it agreed with prosecutors who said the center's operations were violating its charter. "The center was engaging in 'auditing' and 'purification' activities," prosecutors said in a statement. "Such practices were advertised by the organization as healthcare ...

SACRAMENTO — A former Silicon Valley computer consultant whose decade-long fight with the Church of Scientology led to his ruin is asking Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to free him from a Riverside County jail. Keith Henson's crusade against the church brought him a misdemeanor conviction for interfering with the rights of others to practice their religion. The 64-year-old Californian is now two months into a six-month jail sentence for the crime. It is the latest development in a war that forced Henson ...

Should someone go to prison for stabbing a dog 27 times? That's been the topic of discussion within the Travis County district attorney's office in the case of Joanne Lee Hinojosa, 33, accused of seriously injuring her estranged husband's dog during an argument between the couple last year. The dog, a 20-pound mixed-breed named Marti, was later euthanized because of her serious internal injuries, a police affidavit said. Hinojosa's lawyer, Rip Collins, says she was suffering mental stress from the breakup ...

The Church of Scientology last night launched a fresh attempt to discredit the Panorama reporter John Sweeney, following the broadcast of a prime time BBC1 programme investigating its controversial beliefs and recruiting methods. As Panorama editor Sandy Smith took to the airwaves to defend Sweeney's investigation following the furore around his furious YouTube outburst captured by Scientology cameras, the war of words and online propaganda intensified. Mike Rinder, a director at Church of Scientology International, said it was considering legal action ...

Moscow, April 6, Interfax – Moscow’s South District office of public procurator instituted legal proceedings against the headship of the Narconon-Standard narcological clinic that bases its methods on Scientology, the Moskovsky Komsomolets daily reports on Friday. According to the daily, this ideology is disallowed to be practiced in Russian medical institutions. However parents are often ready to use any chance to save their children from drug addiction. The law enforcers started paying attention on the clinic after many complaints about too ...

(Application no. 18147/02) JUDGMENT STRASBOURG 5 April 2007 This judgment will become final in the circumstances set out in Article 44 § 2 of the Convention. It may be subject to editorial revision. In the case of Church of Scientology Moscow v. Russia, The European Court of Human Rights (First Section), sitting as a Chamber composed of: Mr C.L. Rozakis, President, Mr L. Loucaides, Mrs N. Vaji?, Mr A. Kovler, Mrs E. Steiner, Mr K. Hajiyev, Mr D. Spielmann, judges, and ...

Hollywood insiders are wondering if Tom Cruise’s powerful legal team will quash a tell-all which makes some pretty shocking insinuations about the actor’s sex life. Porn producer Paul Barresi is writing a book, “Pellicano’s Enforcer,” about how he allegedly helped incarcerated former private-eye-to-the-stars Anthony Pellicano protect celebs from negative stories. In one chapter that’s been posted on an Internet site, Barresi tells how someone came to him trying to sell a story about Cruise — similar to the one that Cruise ...

A former Russian MP, a local education chief, has been jailed for embezzlement and abuse of authority — he made his subordinates study scientology and used budget money to pay for their studies. Boris Shalimov of the Skovorodinsk region in Russia's Far East has been sentenced to two years in prison for embezzlement and abuse of authority, the website of Russia's Prosecutor General's Office reports. In October 2002 Shalimov became a member of the World Institute of Scientology Enterprises. To get ...

Lynley Hood finds deep flaws in the Lake Alice settlement. News that the police have found no evidence of criminal offending by psychiatrist Dr Selwyn Leeks, former head of the child and adolescent unit at Lake Alice Hospital, has been greeted with dismay by the psychiatric patient advocacy group, Citizen's Commission on Human Rights (CCHR). "We're not giving up now. We are still working with victims and are still going to be filing criminal complaints," the group's New Zealand executive director, ...

A former Southern California business consultant received a four-month prison sentence for conspiring to obstruct a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation of financial advisor Reed E. Slatkin's $593-million investment scam, federal prosecutors said Tuesday. Daniel W. Jacobs helped stall the SEC for more than a year by pretending to represent a Swiss brokerage holding hundreds of millions of dollars in funds from Slatkin investors, according to his plea agreement with the government. Jacobs, 63, who pleaded guilty and cooperated extensively with ...

A New Zealand website spoofing Hollywood actor Tom Cruise and his religion of choice is facing legal action from the Church of Scientology. The church is not amused by scienTOMogy - which features spoof videos of the star - and says it is breaching copyright. When Cruise engaged in some sofa stomping, he coined a new phrase called jumping the couch - the defining moment when someone has gone of the deep end. From that moment Glen Stollery has been chronicling ...

A FORMER Scientology staffer is breaking her silence about being sexually assaulted 100 times at ages 16 and 17 by the church supervisor she was "ordered" to live with, and then receiving threats and intimidating phone calls when she reported the abuse. Five years ago, Gabriel Williams, then a 27-year-old chief supervisor at the Church of Scientology in Mountain View, Calif., forced then-16-year-old Jennifer Stewart to have intercourse with him on the first evening she moved in, according to her statements ...

Dr. Joan Wood gives up her medical license after a report strongly criticizes her handling of a disputed 1995 death. Former Pinellas-Pasco Medical Examiner Joan Wood has relinquished her Florida medical license in the wake of a state health department claim that she "became an advocate for the Church of Scientology" in a bitter dispute over the 1995 death of Scientology member Lisa McPherson. Wood changed the probable cause of death from "severe dehydration" to "accident" based on "factors other than ...

"Just sue. Just do it. Sue, sue, sue. Do it. Go, go, go, go." -Tom Cruise, revealing in Details magazine how he tells his lawyer to deal with negative press. It’s been a fun couple of weeks here at the Beast. After a long, hard Buffalo winter spent slogging away, running on fumes with little relief and few rewards, the last few days have brought some cheer, and put some gas in our tank. Smiles abound in the usually ...