In December 1995, in a sparsely wooded area better known as the Well (or Pit) of Hell located just outside Grenoble in France, sixteen people (including three children, six-year-old Tania Verona, nineteen-month-old Curval Lardanchet and four-year-old Aldwin Lardanchet) were found dead. Some of their number had suffered terrible burns while fourteen of them were discovered spread out in the telltale, wheel-like pattern later identified as a star. That day had been the apex of the winter solstice and all the corpses were later identified as having been members of the Solar Temple. Although some of the dead had obviously committed suicide, others showed signs that they had been brutally murdered. One woman’s jaw was badly fractured, other people had gunshot wounds and nearly everyone in the circle was shown to have taken a combination of the drugs Myolastan and Digoxine. A few had left suicide notes stating that the purpose of their actions was to leave this life and travel to a higher spiritual plane. Chillingly, the notes also indicated that another mass suicide was going to take place.
A year passed with no further incidents, but police were still keeping a close eye on remaining Solar Temple members, paying particular attention to the winter and summer solstice and equinox dates. Perhaps, because nothing occurred on either occasion, they were lulled into a false sense of security, or perhaps they simply didn’t have the resources to keep a constant watch over everyone. Whatever the case, the surveillance was relaxed only for tragedy to strike yet again.
On March 22, 1997 in the small village of St. Casimir in Quebec, yet another mass suicide took place, bringing the total number of Solar Temple deaths to seventy-four. Gathering at the spring equinox on 20 March, five adult members of the group along with three teenagers tried to set off an incendiary device intended to burn both them and the building to the ground. Luckily, the device failed, allowing the teenagers enough time to persuade their parents that they didn’t want to die. Once released, the youngsters fled to a nearby house, but the adults continued with their plan, and this time they succeeded. Having taken tranquillizers, they arranged themselves on the floor in the sign of the cross, then set light to themselves. Later a note was discovered explaining that the victims believed this the only way to transport themselves to another planet.
The authorities may have failed to prevent this tragedy but they were much luckier the following year, for in 1998 they discovered that a German psychologist had gathered together twenty-nine members of the Solar Temple in the Canary Islands with the express purpose of staging yet another mass suicide. Meanwhile, back in France, relatives of the Grenoble victims were pressing the authorities to arrest any surviving members of the cult, especially any surviving leader, with a view to prosecuting them.
One such leader was Michel Tabachnik, a world-renowned musician and conductor, who lived in Paris but had worked for both the Canadian Opera Company and the University of Toronto Symphony Orchestra. He was indicted for ‘participation in a criminal organization’ involving ritual killings, and was brought to trial in Grenoble on April 16, 2001. Although previously not thought to be a main player in the organization, further investigation concluded that he had been a facilitator in the 1994 suicides and all those that followed. In fact, Tabachnik had written a great deal of the group’s literature (which was sold to believers for huge sums of money), and therefore had played a vital role in the priming of members to believe self-annihilation was necessary to achieve the Temple’s goals.
At the trial, the French magistrate, Luc Fontaine, forwarded the opinion that two of the deceased members of the cult – a police officer named Jean-Pierre Lardanchet (whose two sons also died in the 1995 tragedy) and an architect by the name of Andre Friedli – had been the men who, at the Grenoble mass suicide, shot and murdered several cult members who weren’t willing to take their own lives. It was a pattern that had been repeated at all the other incidents – two chosen members of the Temple shooting all those who weren’t on a high enough spiritual level to achieve suicide. Afterwards, the crime-scene reconstruction demonstrated how Lardanchet and Friedli then poured gasoline over the bodies before setting them alight and afterwards killing themselves. It was all extremely grisly and unsurprisingly, given that prosecutors were pressing for a jail term of between five and ten years, Tabachnik denied all charges. After all, there was very little concrete evidence, apart from the writings, to link him directly to the deaths. Yet two former Solar Temple members testified that the order to commit suicide came only from the higher echelons of the group, which included Tabachnik. They also testified that it had been Di Mambro and Tabachnik who had set up the Solar Temple, having traveled together to Egypt where they had been inspired by the ancient pharaohs and where Di Mambro had interpreted ancient carvings for his acolyte, informing him that the god Sothis (later known as Sirius) represented knowledge. In addition to this evidence, during the course of the trial, The Times newspaper in London printed an interview it had conducted with the son of a former member.
Edith Vuarnet, the wife of an Olympic ski champion, could not resist the lure of the cult, despite the fact that fifty-three members of the order had already died.
The first that [Alain] Vuarnet or his father knew of the sect’s existence and their family’s connection with it was in October 1994, when fifty-three of its followers perished in three fires in villas in Switzerland and Canada. The names of Mme Vuarnet and Patrick, her youngest son, were mentioned in a police report.
‘It was as though our world had fallen in,’ says the tall, athletic Vuarnet, who now heads the family business. ‘But in a sense we were relieved – the two gurus had killed themselves. A few months later, I asked my mother whether she still saw other members of the Order of the Solar Temple. She went pale and replied, “Alain, after all that those people have done, do you really think I could have anything to do with them?”’ A year later, in the early hours of December 16, 1995, Edith and Patrick were among sixteen Solar Temple members who climbed through the forests of the Vercors mountains in southwest France to a clearing known locally as the Pit of Hell.4
Alain Vuarnet then proceeded to describe how, back in 1990, his mother had been suffering from a mild bout of depression when she met Luc Jouret. She wanted to find something she could believe in, some type of faith, and Jouret’s cult obviously fitted the bill.
Meanwhile at the trial, Tabachnik, although admitting he had become involved with the group, stated categorically that he was not one of its leaders, but simply someone who had been duped by Di Mambro. ‘My great difficulty, your honor,’ he said during one particularly grueling eight-hour court session, ‘is to explain my role in what happened, because I was completely naïve.’5 But the lawyer acting on behalf of the families of some of the Grenoble victims dismissed this defence. ‘ Tabachnik,’ said Francis Vuillemin,‘is trying to pass himself off as an imbecile, when in fact he is trying to treat others as imbeciles. In truth he was the doctrinarian behind the deaths.’6
Respected international conductor and composer Michel Tabachnik was suspected of involvement in the deaths of the members of the Solar Temple sect but was acquitted of all charges. He went on to win many accolades for his music and was recently appointed chief conductor of the Noord-Nederlands Orkest.
The prosecution then went on to try to prove, through witness statements, that Tabachnik had been one of the leaders who had announced the end of the cult shortly before the first series of three massacres and that he, therefore, knew precisely the nature of the coming events. Yet no matter how much mud the prosecution flung at Tabachnik, no matter how much they tried to link him to the Solar Temple’s leaders, on June 25 he was acquitted of all the charges.
Naturally, Tabachnik’s own lawyer, Francis Szpiner, was delighted with the result, declaring that the trial judges had rightfully resisted media pressure to convict his client. However, contrary to this opinion, the Association de defence de la famille et de l’individu – an anti-cult organization – declared the result disappointing and called for the government pass a law ban
ning the existence of cults. ‘With this law on the books,’ stated the association’s lawyer, Francis Buillemin, ‘Michel Tabachnik wouldn’t have been able to escape punishment.’7 Tabachnik walked from court a free man and has remained so, despite prosecutors appealing against his aquittal. Today he continues to enjoy a successful career as a highly respected conductor.
Police authorities in France, Switzerland and Canada all decided that there was a very real possibility the millennium might prove the spark to ignite another series of mass suicides. In Quebec, approximately seventy-five investigators focused on sects operating in the province and officer Pierre Robichaud of the Sureté du Quebec was quoted as saying:
They [the Order of the Solar Temple] say they are inactive, but unfortunately, we cannot say without doubt that, yes, they are inactive.We are not worried but, unfortunately there are things we cannot predict. Tomorrow, another massacre like the one in St. Casimir can blow up in our face. It is a very touchy matter.8
In Switzerland, too, moves were afoot to prevent another tragedy, this time by opening a public information center on religious cults so that, while not infringing upon people’s beliefs, the public could at least become aware of the danger involved in joining certain groups. François Bellanger, president of the information center said:
We are not fighting these groups. We live in a country where the freedom of religion is sacred. We want to provide neutral and relevant information. In collecting, analysing and providing this data, we are going to act very carefully.9
And this softly, softly approach does seem to have worked for, since the Grenoble suicides and the trial of Michel Tabachnik, there have been no further mass suicides. This does not, of course, necessarily mean that such a thing will not reoccur in the future. Interestingly, in his final report after the Tabachnik trial, Judge Fontaine recorded the following: ‘Structured like a multinational, the Order was truly a giant commercial operation with financial interests on three continents.’ Whether this statement pointed to the fact that many people believed (and still believe) the cult to be a front for organized crime has, however, never been proved. What is certain is that millions of dollars moved through the Solar Temple’s accounts, and that it included amongst its members many highly influential people such as police officers, politicians, civil servants and, allegedly (according to a Channel Four TV documentary), Princess Grace of Monaco. It may also be true that Di Mambro and Jouret were being manipulated by someone even higher up in the organization than themselves – someone whose name, in the true nature of a secret society, has never been revealed.
THE HASHISHIM – THE FIRST TERRORISTS IN HISTORY
With the jugglery of deceit and the trickery of untruth, with guileful preparations and specious obfuscations, he laid the foundations of the fida’is, and he said: ‘Who of you will rid this state of the evil of Nizam al-Mulk Tusi?’ A man called Bu Tahir Arrani laid the hand of acceptance on his breast, and, following the path of error by which he hoped to attain the bliss of the world-to-come, on the night of Friday, the 12th of Ramadan of the year 485 [ …] he came in the guise of a Sufi to the litter of Nizam al-Mulk, who was being borne from the audience to the tent of his women, and struck him with a knife, and by that blow he suffered martyrdom.
RASHID AL-DIN
These days, the word ‘assassin’ is common parlance, used to define any murderer of an important person or anyone hired in the role of professional killer, but originally the word came to the West via the Arabic language just before the time of the Crusades, when it was used to denote a secretive Islamic sect feared throughout that region for the many murders it committed. The Hashishim (also referred to as the Ismailis or the Assassins) were a group who became infamous for using murder as a political weapon. Unpitying, merciless and ruthlessly systematic in both the planning and execution of their crimes, this radical Islamic sect was, justifiably, one of the most feared organizations in the world at that time.
First mention of the group is believed to be in the report of an envoy who was sent to Egypt and Syria in 1175 by the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa.
Note, that on the confines of Damascus, Antioch and Aleppo there is a certain race of Saracens in the mountains, who in their own vernacular are called Heyssessini […] This breed of men live without law; they eat swine’s flesh against the law of the Saracens, and make use of all women without distinction, including their mothers and sisters […] They have among them a Master, who strikes the greatest fear into all the Saracen princes both far and near, as well as the neighboring Christian lords. For he has the habit of killing them in an astonishing way.1
This ‘Master,’ who was best known by the sobriquet ‘The Old Man of the Mountain’ (a nickname which was passed down from one Assassin leader to the next), wielded tremendous power over his followers, engendering in them a fanatical devotion that admitted no other master.
The explorer Marco Polo, who traveled through this part of the world in 1273, made some interesting observations relating to the Old Man, observations that go some way towards explaining the hold he had over his followers. Polo described how the Old Man had established a ‘certain valley between two mountains to be enclosed, and had turned it into a garden, the largest and most beautiful that was ever seen, filled with every variety of fruit.’ Polo then goes on to explain how the Old Man required his followers to believe that this garden was actually Paradise. ‘Now,’ writes Polo, ‘no man was allowed to enter the Garden save those whom he intended to be his ASHISHIN.’ Once the Old Man had selected those he wished to enter, they were given a potion to drink after which they would fall asleep, then be carried into the garden. On waking in such beautiful surroundings the Old Man’s victims would immediately believe they were in Paradise. And here they would remain until he needed one of them to return to the outside world as an assassin. The chosen one would once again be given the sleeping potion, only this time he would be carried out of the garden and on awakening be given his instructions. ‘Go thou and slay So and So,’ wrote Marco Polo in imitation of how the Old Man spoke, ‘and when thou returnest my Angels shall bear thee into Paradise. And should’st thou die, nevertheless even so I shall send my Angels to carry thee back into Paradise.’2
Venetian traveler and explorer Marco Polo came across the cult of the Hashishim when traveling through the Middle East in 1273 – and wrote extensively about the ‘Old Man of the Mountain.’
Whether the above account is true or not (and many historians for a variety of reasons believe it is not), what it does illustrate is the extent to which the Hashishim had invaded public consciousness. By the twelfth century several commentators thought they detected the Hashishim’s hand behind all kinds of political murder, not just in Syria but also in Europe. In 1158, while Frederick Barbarossa was laying siege to Milan, one historian alleges that an ‘Assassin’ was caught in Barbarossa’s camp. In 1195 while the English King Richard I ‘Lionheart’ was sojourning at Chinon, it has been documented that at least fifteen Assassins were captured and later confessed to having been sent by the King of France to kill him. Numerous other accounts began to filter through and before long it became commonplace to accuse your enemy of being in league with the Old Man of the Mountain for the sole purpose of having you assassinated. The truth is that most European leaders of those times would not have needed any outside help to rid themselves of their enemies by murdering them, so the accusation was actually something of a goading insult.
Nevertheless, the Hashishim continued to arouse Western curiosity and in 1697 a man by the name of Bartholomé de Herbelot wrote a book called the Bibliothèque orientale (The Oriental Library) which contained almost all the information then available on the history, religion and literature of this region. The Assassins, so de Herbelot concluded, were an offshoot of the Ismailis (who were themselves an offshoot of the Shi’a, whose quarrel with the Sunnis was, and still is when one looks at modern-day Iraq, the main religious schism in Islam).
Another major
study – though from a considerably later date – was by the Arabic scholar Silvestre de Sacy, who posed the theory that the Hashishim were so called due to their liberal intake of hashish; however, this theory was later discredited as the Ismailis never make mention of this drug in their texts. It is also believed that hashishi – a local Syrian word – was a term of abuse given to the sect to describe their unsociable behavior, rather than a reference to any drug. Indeed, so ‘unsociable’ was the Hashishim’s behavior that it is thought the original Old Man of the Mountain – a man by the name of Hasani Sabbah – didn’t leave his mountain retreat for well over thirty-five years.
Sabbah was born in the city of Qumm, around the middle of the eleventh century, but while he was still a young boy his father moved the entire family to Rayy (nowadays known as Tehran), where Sabbah began his first serious attempt at religious education.
The Most Evil Secret Societies in History Page 12
