Ten years later, my thesis about Scientology is confirmed by the Paris court of appeal
or
Revenge of the pariah of the intelligence community over top French officials



by Arnaud Palisson, February 7, 2012
(unofficial translation)

Last Thursday, February 2, 2012, the Paris court of appeal upheld a decision of the correctional court and convicted two Parisian Scientology entities as legal persons for fraud, aggravated by the fact that the offenses constituted organized fraud, committed by using a personality test to fraudulently persuade victims to purchase Scientology goods and services. The court issued fines totaling 600,000 euros - nearly one million Canadian dollars. This is the most severe penalty ever imposed for fraud against an organization in France.

Exactly ten years (and a few hours) ago, on February 1, 2002, at Cergy-Pontoise University, I defended my doctoral thesis in criminal law, which was devoted to the Church of Scientology. Using only open sources, I argued that it is necessary to:

• prosecute Scientology organizations in France, in particular for organized fraud, aggravated by the fact that the offenses constitute organized fraud

and

• systematically seek to establish the criminal liability of the legal person involved

in particular, because of the use of the personality test to fraudulently persuade victims to purchase Scientology products and services.

At that time, I was a police officer in the Central Directorate of General Information (DCRG - now DCRI). I worked as an intelligence analyst responsible for monitoring cults at the national level. In October 2002, I presented a 3-hour lecture about the Church of Scientology before a hundred or so French and foreign judges, diplomats, and military and police officials at the National Magistrates School (ENM) in Paris.

On this occasion, I forwarded copies of my thesis to two judges. One was Belgian and he was investigating an important Scientology case; the other was French and she was investigating the huge Church of Scientology-Paris Celebrity Centre case (the same case that ended last week at the court of appeal).

From that point on, my thesis never left the desk of the two judges. It also landed on the desk of a Swiss judge a few months later.

Despite the succession of judges that investigated the case of the Paris Celebrity Centre, my thesis remained the key legal reference document. The investigation, which began in 1999 in a traditional manner, underwent a strategic change of direction in the light of my university work. Gradually, the investigating judges:

• used the internal terminology of the Church of Scientology, as I recommended,
• looked into the real functions detailed in the organization chart that I provided,
• focused mainly on the criminal charge that I advocated, namely fraud, aggravated by the fact that the offenses constitute organized fraud,
• sought to establish, as I advocated, the criminal liability of legal persons.

My thesis was known only to a few persons, but it became public on November 13, 2002, when Le Figaro published a full-page article about it by Christophe Cornevin. On the same day, my thesis was posted in full on the internet - via the website of Roger Gonnet, former head of the Church of Scientology of Lyon, who became the cult's chief opponent in France.

Scientology's Parisian officials are usually well informed, but they did not see any of this coming.

Nevertheless, Scientology reacted speedily and with some effectiveness. The following month, the Church, through its lawyers, officially asked the Minister of Education to revoke my Doctor of Law degree. The organization said that my work was partisan and devoid of objectivity or of any scientific methodology. However, Scientology did not obtain any response from the Ministry of Education.

When the Church of Scientology learned that the Swiss publisher Favre was preparing a version of my thesis for the general public, it approached Pierre-Marcel Favre and urged him to abandon the project, at the same time providing a disingenuous analysis of my thesis. This second attempt also failed.

(Note: I posted on the internet a long and scathing refutation of the arguments put forward in the two documents just mentioned.)

Paradoxically, it is when the Scientology organization, out of desperation, turned to the Ministry of the Interior that it achieved some success.

In April 2003, lawyers for the Church of Scientology in Paris contacted the office of then Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy. They requested that my doctoral thesis be withdrawn from the internet. They found a sympathetic ear in the person of the chief of staff, Claude Guéant (who today is Interior Minister).

In keeping with the principle of administrative dominoes, a directive from the chief of staff then percolated down to me. My director told me, in substance:: "Either you withdraw your thesis from the internet or you leave the Cults and Sects group."

My thesis stayed put, but not me.

A month later, my book appeared in bookstores. I became a sort of pariah, a civil servant that no one knew what to do with.

While I was packing my boxes to leave for an assignment at the newly created MIVILUDES (Interministerial Mission of Vigilance and Combat against Sectarian Abuses), I suddenly got radio silence. The president of MIVILUDES, Jean-Louis Langlais, did not even take the trouble to call me on the phone to tell me that my transfer was canceled.

In the meantime, lawyers for the Church of Scientology put pressure on the director of the National Magistrates School. The training center on Île de la Cité was placed off-limits to me. My successor there was journalist Serge Faubert, who has a very deep understanding of the Scientology organization and who wrote what today remains an essential investigative book about it. And to the judges who asked him where to look for legal references about Scientology, Serge Faubert (I thank him for this) answered by showing them my book!

After spending a few months on the sidelines in another group at the DCRG, I asked for and obtained a transfer to the other end of the corridor, to an anti-terrorist section. I stayed there two and a half years.

Ultimately, my thesis did find favor in the eyes of a handful of investigating judges in Europe. My adventures are told in part by an article in Charlie-Hebdo and a documentary that aired on Canal+. But, for the policeman that I am, something is seriously wrong:

• I was dumped by my superiors - who earlier had hired me for my specialization.
• The Interior Ministry officially portrayed me as a partisan civil servant.
• MIVILUDES suddenly forgot my very existence.
• The professional training center for judges slammed the door in my face, as it would to a hard-core delinquent.

But last Thursday, exactly ten years after I defended my thesis, the Paris court of appeal delivered a slap in the face to all those civil servants who only carried out orders: I was right.

Let there be no mistake. I am neither bitter nor vengeful. Given the way that MIVILUDES evolved, I know I would not have lasted two months there. Moreover, with Claude Guéant as head of the Interior Ministry, my career progression would have suffered.

Finally, my administrative setbacks are in large part what led me to go to Canada to see if the grass is greener there. And this undeniably is the case.

In other words [as Edith Piaf sang]: Non, rien de rien. Non, je ne regrette rien.
["No, nothing at all. / No, I regret nothing."]

But 5,500 kilometers from Paris, an ocean away and 10 years later, please permit me to exult.

A judicial procedural error via this blog?
The Paris Church of Scientology will have tried really everything ...



by Arnaud Palisson, May 8, 2012
(unofficial translation)

Having been harshly convicted by the Paris court of appeal last February, the Paris Church of Scientology is going all out to seek the annulment of the entire case at the Court of Cassation. In its latest attempt to gain traction, the church specifically referred to an article in this blog and elevated it into proof positive of a judicial procedural error. But the reasoning behind this is so far from reality that it quickly evaporates under scrutiny.

On Wednesday, May 2, the local Church of Scientology held a demonstration outside the Paris branch of the National Magistrates School (ENM). The Scientologists were protesting against a recurrent training seminar for judges that is organized in collaboration with the Interministerial Mission of Vigilance and Combat against Sectarian Abuses (MIVILUDES). The ENM has hosted this initiative for nearly fifteen years now, and the Church of Scientology has a tradition of condemning it.

As I mentioned in an earlier blog entry, it was under pressure from the church that, in 2002, ENM officials decided to stop inviting me to speak at this seminar.

So last Wednesday, about eighty Scientologists gathered outside the National Magistrates School on Île de la Cité with signs and slogans galore calling for MIVILUDES to cease its indoctrination of judges.

This was apparently nothing new under the Parisian sun, except perhaps that this year's demonstration took place three months after an important court decision had been rendered. On February 2, the Paris court of appeal upheld the most severe conviction ever delivered against French Scientology organizations, as legal entities, on charges of organized fraud and the illegal practice of pharmacy.

Over the months that preceded the appeal trial, the Scientology organizations in Paris engaged in countless media and legal actions to delay the inevitable and portray themselves as victims of religious persecution. Once the court of appeal's decision was announced, the church began carping about rampant mental manipulation in state institutions, the Justice Ministry in particular, of course. But the May 2 demonstration in front of the National Magistrates School also had a peculiar twist.

During this gathering, several Scientologists distributed copies of a press release that specifically refers to an article in this blog [link to an English translation]. Because the press release singled me out by name, I found myself being quoted in the newspaper article that Le Monde published about the demonstration [link to an English translation].

The problem is that both the Church of Scientology's press release and the article in Le Monde quote me as saying things I did not write.

The press release says:

"During these sessions, instead of delivering training on an aspect of the law as it applies generally and equally to all citizens, the National Magistrates School indoctrinates judges to specifically prosecute religious or belief groups and their members who are stigmatized by MIVILUDES. It has been established that the Church of Scientology is cited by name and attacked during these training sessions. The 'information' provided to magistrates in these sessions is incomplete, totally biased, and often distorted. For the most part, the instructors are persons who are openly hostile to the Church of Scientology (...).

"In October 2002, right in the middle of the investigation into the case currently pending before the Court of Cassation opposing the Spiritual Association of the Church of Scientology-Celebrity Centre and the public prosecutor (...), the magistrates received a training session conducted by a former Renseignements généraux (RG) police officer who is particularly hostile to the Scientology religion: Arnaud Palisson.

"Scientologists suspected the judge who investigated the entire case of having participated in this 'training' and, accordingly, had asked her if this was indeed accurate, to avoid any problem regarding the impartiality of the judges involved in this case. She refused to answer. (...)

"However, on February 7, 2012, five days after the decision by the court of appeal, Arnaud Palisson (the RG police officer) published an article in his blog that perfectly explains the role he played in connection with the investigating judge in this case: he not only provided three hours of training to the judge about the methods he advocated to obtain a conviction against Scientology, he also handed her a several hundred page document on how to achieve this, a document that, according to him, never left the judge's desk and served as the basis for the entire case currently pending before the Court of Cassation. (...)

"The Church intends to assert its rights to a fair trial by denouncing this undue interference both in France as well as before international bodies for the protection of fundamental rights."

Take a close look at the reasoning here. According to the Church of Scientology:

1. I am a notorious opponent of the Scientology religion, so anything I write or say about it is unfounded;
2. During the October 2002 seminar at the National Magistrates School, I trained the investigating judge responsible for the Paris Celebrity Centre case on how to convict Scientology organizations in court;
3. I personally handed her a copy of my thesis;
4. Therefore, the investigating judge was misled by my conference and by my university writings;
5. My thesis was not included in the investigation file, so the Church of Scientology-Celebrity Centre was unable to examine it;
6. Consequently, since the judge investigated the entire case on the basis of my thesis, the whole preliminary investigation is marred by irregularities; the Court of Cassation will have to quash the judgment delivered on February 2 by the Paris court of appeal on the grounds of a procedural error.

Let us see what the reality is:

1 - I am not hostile toward the Scientology religion

It is very inaccurate of the Paris Church of Scientology to portray me as "particularly hostile to the Scientology religion." In fact, I wrote in the conclusion of my doctoral thesis (p. 521) that:

"Under public law, Scientology can - and should - therefore be considered a religion. (...)"

The public relations department of the Paris Church of Scientology cannot claim ignorance of this particular passage in my thesis because a lawyer for the organization explicitly referred to it in a 2002 document (page 2) denouncing my university writings:

"Mr. Palisson acknowledges on page 521 of his thesis that Scientology is a religion. (...)"

In other words, I believe we have the right to think whatever we please (freedom of religion - an element of freedom of thought - is absolute), but we don't have the right to do whatever we please, because one person's freedom ends where another person's freedom begins.

2 - At the National Magistrates School, I did not train the investigating judge responsible for the Celebrity Centre case

After reading my article on this blog, the Church of Scientology concluded that I "provided three hours of training to the investigating judge about the methods that [­I] advocated to obtain a conviction against Scientology."

But this is doubly wrong.

1. My three-hour seminar mostly consisted of a presentation about the Church of Scientology (history, dogma, practices, ...). The rest was not about methods I advocated to obtain convictions against Scientology organizations, but about the procedural difficulties that judges and police who investigate these organizations might encounter. I have a copy of this presentation available for judicial purposes, if necessary.
   
2. The investigating judge did not attend this seminar at the National Magistrates School in 2002. Precisely to avoid any suspicion of partiality.

It immediately follows that:

3 - I did not hand a copy of my thesis to the investigating judge

In fact, I wrote in my blog article:

"On this occasion, I forwarded copies of my thesis to two judges. One was Belgian and he was investigating an important Scientology case; the other was French and she was investigating the huge Church of Scientology-Paris Celebrity Centre case"

But neither of these judges was present at the seminar - in fact, I've never met them - so I could not have handed them a copy of my thesis. I forwarded, in other words, I sent them a digital copy of my document, which I provided to third parties who were asked to deliver it to them.

I don't actually know if these judges received their copy in this manner ... or some other way.

4 - My thesis has been freely available since early 2002

The Church of Scientology strangely forgets to mention two crucial facts:

1. At the time of the training seminar for judges, several copies of my doctoral thesis had already been freely available for months in the library of Cergy-Pontoise University (where I completed my thesis). Through a simple inter-university loan, it was easy to obtain a copy in Paris.
   
2. Four weeks after my seminar at the National Magistrates School (on November 13, to be exact), my doctoral thesis became freely available in full on the Internet.

In short, whether or not I forwarded a copy of my thesis to the judge who was investigating the case at that time is a false problem. She could have chosen to obtain this university document freely in at least three different ways.

5 - The imaginary violation of the principle of contradictoriality

In criminal law, whenever a party wants to produce a document or testimony, that party must give advance notice to the other parties. This is to allow the opposing party to prepare its arguments in response to the new evidence. This is called the principle of contradictoriality.

When a case is the subject of a preliminary investigation, it is the investigating judge who ensures that the principle of contradictoriality is respected by appending new information to the case file. The lawyers who represent the parties and have access to the file can thus familiarize themselves with these additional elements.

The principle of contradictoriality therefore serves to ensure that all parties effectively know about any new information.

According to the Church of Scientology's press release:

"This document is not in the case file, and this is completely illegal and violates the rights of the defense. (...) [It] never appeared in the file, thus depriving the defense of all its rights and plunging the incriminated Scientologists into a Kafkaesque trial in which key evidence remained hidden from the defendants."

Who are they trying to fool? It is precisely because my thesis was available in full on the Internet in November 2002 that Scientology's lawyers in this case pressured the office of the Interior Minister in a vain attempt to obtain its withdrawal from the Internet.

The publication of my thesis on the Internet also gave me the opportunity to meet with one of the Church of Scientology's lawyers, François Jacquot, about this matter. It happens that I had known him personally for several years because we both graduated from the Master of Advanced Study program in criminal sciences at the University of Nancy II, class of 1993. In 1993-94, we were both teaching assistants for second-year undergraduate judicial law students at Nancy II.

It is trivial to prove that Scientology's lawyers knew about the content of my thesis since, in December 2002, in a letter to the Minister of Education:

• The spokesperson for Scientology in Paris, Mrs. Daniele Gounord, presented an eleven-page analysis of my thesis.
• A lawyer for the organization, the late Aram Kevorkian, also analyzed my thesis in a seven-page letter.

A counter-analysis of these, to say the least, whimsical arguments can be found here.

I would add that, in the minds of Scientology officials, an investigating judge has no right to read freely available academic literature. Unless the judge includes them in the case file. But my doctoral thesis:

• was produced only from open source information
• has never been considered as proof, as evidence, or as testimony. It is not mentioned in the statement of findings in the decisions of the Paris correctional court or of the court of appeal.

Why should it have been included in the case file?

It is therefore evident that, in this matter, the principle of contradictoriality has in no way been violated.

6 - The entire case is not null and void

According to the Church of Scientology, the entire case is invalidated because:

• I supposedly trained the judge "who investigated the entire case" of the Celebrity Centre;
  
• My thesis supposedly was "the basis for the entire case currently pending before the Court of Cassation."

But the reality is different. In fact, between 1989 and 2008 (when the case was sent to the correctional court), four investigating judges succeeded one another at the helm of this case. And I trained none of the four.

Moreover, if my approach to organized fraud inspired the judges, they did not follow all my advice to the letter. For example, I recommended invoking the laws concerning the illegal practice of medicine, but the investigating judges opted instead to focus on the illegal practice of pharmacy. I also advocated laying charges of fraud based on consumer law in connection with the sale of electrometers, but the investigating judges chose not to pursue this.

*

**

If one is to believe the account put forward by the Paris Church of Scientology, I am the sole architect of the organization's defeat at the Paris correctional court and at the court of appeal. The church gives me too much credit. It forgets the perseverance of the successive investigating judges. It forgets the painstaking work by investigators over many years.

While there is little doubt that my thesis allowed a strategic reorientation of the litigation and gave investigators important keys for deciphering the operation of Scientology orgs, this was very little compared to the long and meticulous investigative and legal work. And if I showed the way, I did it without presenting any secret information, in a completely transparent manner, so that everyone can find out about it.

Furthermore, if an investigating judge reads my thesis, this does not mean ipso facto that he or she will consider my writings as gospel. An investigating judge is basically an expert in criminal law. He or she is qualified to judge if what I write is true or false. In sum, to suggest that I indoctrinated the investigating judge is quite simply grotesque.

In any case, the magistrates of the bench at the Paris correctional court and court of appeal did not need:

• three hours of training from me at the National Magistrates School
• or to read my thesis

to render a decision against two Scientology organizations that imposes the most severe conviction ever delivered against legal entities for organized fraud and the illegal practice of pharmacy. Those who demonstrated last Wednesday can therefore rest assured that the French justice system still has its freedom of thought and action. The Paris Scientology organization has experienced the consequences of this firsthand.

It is understandable that the Scientologists in Paris are desperately trying to save their church from the disastrous coverage it receives in the media and from public condemnation. But this must not be done using arguments contrary to established facts.

Just posted a report on Scientology's attack on Palisson
and his riposte.
http://infinitecomplacency.blogspot.com ... -foul.html
[snip]

Summing up his position in his blog, he wrote: “...I believe that you have the right to think what you want …; but you don't have the right to do what you want, individual freedom stopping where the rights of others begins.”

I love this quote (seems similar to a quote by Xenophon in the OZ)