GRENOBLE, France -- A Swiss orchestra conductor believed by prosecutors to have played a key role in a doomsday cult that lost 74 members in ritual mass suicides in France, Switzerland and Canada appeared before a French court yesterday.
Michel Tabachnik, 58, has denied any involvement with the mysterious Order of the Solar Temple cult, but a French investigating magistrate decided last year there was enough evidence to put him on trial.
ASSOCIATION WITH CRIMINALS
Tabachnik is charged with "association with criminals," which carries a 10-year prison term and a fine equivalent to $223,000 Cdn.
Tabachnik has long been suspected of close ties to Joseph Di Mambro, the now-dead leader of the Order of the Solar Temple. The cult lost 58 members in mass suicides in Switzerland and Canada between 1994 and 1997.
BIZARRE MURDER-SUICIDE
French investigators have struggled to make sense of a bizarre 1995 murder-suicide in the French Alps. The charred remains of 14 victims, including three children, were found arranged in a star formation in a forest clearing near Grenoble. The bodies of two other members were found nearby.
Investigators hope that Tabachnik, a free-lance conductor who lives in Paris and had periodically worked in Canada, can tell them more about the mysterious group, whose members believed that suicide instantly transported them to a new world.
Tabachnik founded the Golden Way Foundation with Di Mambro in Geneva during the 1980s. That group later became the Order of the Solar Temple.