Order of the Solar Temple: Conductor on trial in cult deaths

A Swiss conductor who worked for the Canadian Opera Company and the University of Toronto Symphony Orchestra goes on trial tomorrow in France charged with playing a role in the mass deaths of the Order of the Solar Temple.

The mass murder-suicides of the doomsday sect occurred in the mid-'90s in Switzerland, France and Canada. Four adults and one three-month-old baby were found dead after a house fire north of Montreal on Oct. 4, 1994. The same day, 48 sect members died of poison and gunshots in Swiss farmhouses and chalets. And in December, 1995, 16 bodies were found in eastern France.

The Geneva-based conductor, Michel Tabachnik, was ordered to stand trial last year on a charge of "participation in a criminal association." The charges state Mr. Tabachnik took part in two 1994 meetings, including one 11 days before the Canadian and Swiss killings -- during which he "seems to have announced the winding-up of the group and the conclusion of its mission."

Court documents state Mr. Tabachnik was charged on the basis of evidence that he "edited and distributed doctrinal instructions intended to condition individuals to the idea that they belonged to an elite with a mission of redemption, and to create a dynamic towards murder."

The conductor's lawyer, however, will argue Mr. Tabachnik is a victim of a faulty French justice system, overzealous to pin culpability for these murders.
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Of Mr. Tabachnik's involvement with Solar Temple, Mr. Morey said, "He never mentioned it, he never promoted it, he never proselytized among the students.

"I had no inkling," he said, adding, "I've certainly been aware of events as they have unfolded over the past couple of years in the newspapers."

The Order of the Solar Temple, founded in 1971 by Joseph Di Mambro, gained notoriety in Quebec with the 1994 murders in a cult-owned condominium in Morin Heights, north of Montreal. A subsequent criminal investigation by Quebec provincial police found two of the five cult members killed in Montreal -- André and Nicki Dutoit -- had recently had a falling out with Mr. Di Mambro when they gave their newborn son the same name as the cult leader's daughter, Emmanuel. Mr. Di Mambro claimed he had fathered his Emmanuel by a woman with whom he had never had sex, thus gracing his progeny with divine status as the cult's "cosmic child."

The second Emmanuel, then, was considered the Antichrist. Mr. Di Mambro sent two cult knights to kill the child and its parents and then immolate themselves -- on the same October day of the mass killing in Switzerland.

That Switzerland mass death, according to the investigation by Quebec police, was in fact to have originally taken place not in Switzerland but in Quebec.

The plan had been to carry out a death pact with followers in a luxury condo owned by the cult on Lafleur Street in St. Sauveur, not far from Morin Heights. The scheme fell apart, however, when in March, 1993, two of the Quebec sect's followers were arrested when they attempted to purchase two revolvers and silencers for their leader.

After they pleaded guilty to the charges, Mr. Di Mambro promptly moved the Solar Temple headquarters to the less conspicuous locale of Switzerland. Police estimated the lives of 40 to 80 Quebecers were saved by the arrest and cult relocation.
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Conductor on trial in cult deaths

Order of the Solar Temple: Michel Tabachnik denies involvement in the killings