A court in the French city of Grenoble has acquitted the Swiss orchestra conductor, Michel Tabachnik, of involvement in the deaths of 16 followers of the Solar Temple Order. The verdict means the chances of a Swiss investigation into the religious cult being reopened are now exceedingly slim.
Tabachnik, the first person to be tried in connection with the Solar Temple Order deaths, was not in court to hear the verdict read out, but outside the courtroom his lawyers expressed their satisfaction with the decision.
"Today's verdict brings to an end a long and painful ordeal for my client," said defence lawyer Francois Szpiner.
His delight was not shared by lawyers acting for the families of the 16 victims of the mass-suicides-killings in the Vercors region of France, nor the legal team representing those that died in the Swiss incidents a year earlier. Many of them had predicted this outcome.
“The prosecution has failed in its mission to prove what they were accusing the defendant of,” said Jacques Barillon, a lawyer representing the families of Swiss victims of the Solar Temple Order.
“I am not surprised by this verdict,” said Dominique Warluzel, the Geneva-based lawyer representing Alain Vuarnet, the son of a former French Olympic skiing champion, who lost his mother and brother in the incident at Vercors.
"To uphold a charge of criminal association, you need tangible, concrete
evidence,” he told swissinfo. “I'm not surprised that the court decided to give him the benefit of the doubt, since nothing new came to light.”
Sixteen people died in the ritual killing at Vercors in December 1995. Fourteen of the bodies were arranged in a circle and set on fire. One year earlier, 48 people, including a number of children, had died in two apparent mass-suicides in Switzerland, at Granges-sur-Salvan in canton Valais, and Cheiry in canton Fribourg.
Among the dead at Salvan were the sect’s two highest-ranking leaders, Jo di Mambro and Luc Jouret. The prosecution had claimed that Tabachnik had continued to be a close associate of di Mambro. The defendant insisted he had severed his links with the sect in 1992, two years before the first killings.
The Valais authorities never began a judicial procedure into the affair, while in canton Fribourg, the authorities closed their inquiry in August 1998 without bringing anyone to trial because those believed responsible, di Mambro and Jouret, were dead.
A number of the families believed that if the Swiss had launched a criminal investigation, and surviving members of the Order had been placed under surveillance, the Vercors killings might not have happened.
“Following this verdict, the chances of the Swiss investigation being reopened are extremely slim,” says Jacques Barillon.
“The families expected this verdict, because the trial yielded nothing new. But we must remain vigilant - you never know what might happen. But I admit, the families are disillusioned,” he told swissinfo.