BRUSSELS: A Belgian court on Friday threw out charges that could have seen Church of Scientology banned as a “criminal enterprise,” after a judge said the defendants were targeted because of their religion.
Eleven members of the celebrity-backed US-based church and two affiliated bodies had been charged with fraud, extortion, the illegal practice of medicine, running a criminal enterprise and violating the right to privacy.
“The entire proceedings are declared inadmissible for a serious and irremediable breach of the right to a fair trial,” presiding judge Yves Regimont said at the Palace of Justice in Brussels.
He criticized the investigators involved in an 18-year probe into Scientology in Belgium for what he said was prejudice, and prosecutors for being vague in their case against the religion.
“The defendants were prosecuted primarily because they were Scientologists,” the judge added.
The case was the subject of a seven-week trial that ended last December.
“It’s a relief,” Scientology’s spokesman in Belgium, Eric Roux, told reporters outside the court.
“When you have had 20 years of your life under a pressure that you know is unfair, where one attacks your beliefs and not something you have done, the day when the court says it officially, it’s a big relief,” he added.
Defense lawyer Pascal Vanderveeren denounced the case as careless and prejudiced aimed at “attacking Scientology and not those who are part of it.”
Belgian court rejects case against Scientology
Belgian court rejects case against Scientology
Sri Lanka hospital releases 22 rescued Iranian sailors
- Sri Lankan authorities said the survivors from the Dena were being handled according to international humanitarian law
COLOMBO: Sri Lanka discharged from hospital 22 Iranian sailors who were plucked from life rafts after their warship was sunk by a US submarine, officials said Sunday.
The sailors were treated at Karapitiya Hospital in the southern port city of Galle since Wednesday after the IRIS Dena was torpedoed just outside Sri Lanka’s territorial waters.
“Another 10 are still undergoing treatment,” a medical officer at the hospital told AFP.
He said the bodies of 84 Iranians retrieved from the Indian Ocean were also at the hospital.
Those discharged from hospital overnight had been taken to a beach resort in the same district.
Sri Lankan authorities said the survivors from the Dena were being handled according to international humanitarian law, and the government had contacted the International Committee of the Red Cross for assistance.
The island is also providing safe haven for another 219 Iranian sailors from a second ship, the IRIS Bushehr, that was allowed to berth a day after the Dena was sunk.
Sailors from the Bushehr have been moved to a Sri Lanka Navy camp at Welisara, just north of the capital Colombo, and their ship taken over by Sri Lanka’s navy.
Sri Lanka announced it was taking the Bushehr to the north-eastern port of Trincomalee, but an engine failure and other technical and administrative issues had delayed the movement, a navy spokesman said.
Sri Lanka has denied claims that it was under pressure from Washington not to allow the Iranians to return home, and said Colombo will be guided solely by international law and its own domestic legislation.
A US State Department spokesperson said the disposition of the Bushehr crew and Iranian sailors rescued at sea was up to Sri Lanka.
“The United States, of course, respects and recognizes Sri Lanka’s sovereignty in the handling of this situation,” the spokesperson told AFP in Washington.
India, meanwhile, said Saturday that it had allowed a third Iranian warship, the IRIS Lavan, to dock in one of its ports on “humane” grounds after it too reported engine problems.
The three ships were part of a multi-national fleet review held by India before the war in the Middle East started last week.
“I think it was the humane thing to do, and I think we were guided by that principle,” Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said on Saturday.
The Lavan docked in the south-west Indian port of Kochi on Wednesday.
“A lot of the people on board were young cadets. They have disembarked and are in a nearby facility,” Jaishankar said.
