Half an hour ago a team of copyright infringement investigators and computer experts, four in total, left Karin's place after finishing scientology's latest raid against me and the very first one against Karin. They had arrived two and a half hours earlier in the company of two policemen, with a search warrant signed by the public prosecutor.

The cause: scientology's repeated and persistent complaints that we are spreading OTs, NOTs and god knows what nots. The "evidence":

http://search.freewinds.nl/skriptures.html . Yes, indeed, a webpage saying "you won't find any OTs and NOTs here" is clear evidence that the OTs and NOTs are being spread from that site. If you don't get the logic, you haven't been a scientologist long enough and you need to work harder on your bridge.

Anyway, we had the choice between co-operating and not co-operating. If we did co-operate, we would be voluntarily subjecting ourselves to an invasion of privacy, but get the whole thing done and over with for both parties. If we did not co-operate, they would be left empty-handed (encrypted drives, as one should have expected), but we would be left equally empty-handed while they took the computers for a year-long futile investigation. We decided to co-operate and gave them full access, with the agreement that they wouldn't nose closely on what obviously, at their own judgement, was not what they were looking for.

Fine. They found nothing. There was nothing to find.

Our own private copies of the OTs and NOTs, of course, but those are part of the evidence in our respective lawsuits and several courts have already ruled that even if we may not spread them, we may possess them.

So those copies don't count.

To make the search complete and avoid having to go through the same procedure once again, I offered the search team to search on the freewinds webserver too. They gladly accepted and arrived at the same results: nothing illegal there. The net result is that I now have an official statement from the authorities that there is nothing illegal on the server, which I can use when the CoS complains to domain registries and search engines and upstream providers about that same server.

As for the intimidation and harassment value of the search, we are thinking about a suitable revenge.

A few pickets, better organised and more spectacular than what we have done so far, seems appropriate.

Better ideas are welcome by e-mail.

Z

From: Zenon Panoussis <oracle@xs4all.nl>
Subject: Re: Raided again
Date: Fri, 13 Sep 2002 15:39:48 +0200
Organization: XS4ALL Internet BV
Message-ID: <alsprf$988$1@news1.xs4all.nl>

Ted Mayett wrote:

>

> I'm curious about things like floppies and cd's, about something like
> a filing cabinet for hardcopy materials, were they able to search
> through things like this?

They were, but they were not interested in anything except what could (a) be evidence of or (b) serve the purpose of distribution of materials to the general public. This means that they would be interested in a stack of identical CDs that are ready to go in the mail, but not in a dusty stack of CDs marked "taxes 1995", "taxes 1996" etc.

To understand this you need to consider the relation between the alleged offence and the permitted extent of the search.

Theoretically, those CDs marked "taxes" could very well contain NOTs for distribution, but in practice it's not very likely. If they would try to search really thoroughly, they would have to tear down the house, dig in the garden, cut open the matress, go through every single data file and every single paper around. The preliminary work would take three days and processing the material would take half a year. You can do that kind of search when you are investigating a murder, but not when you are investigating an ill-grounded suspicion of an offence that is punishable by a fine or a maximum imprisonment of six months. Not only because it would be a waste of police resources, but also (and mostly) because the balance of the interest of investigation against the rights of the suspect is not limited to whether a search may be conducted or not, but extends to *how* a search is conducted. A prosecutor who tears apart a house in a case like this would be killing both the case and his own career.

Z

Subject: Re: Raided again
From: Martin Cleaver <martinATcleaverDOTnl>
Organization: MC Translations
Message-ID: <Xns92879F7C7DFC0martincleavernl@194.109.133.20>
Date: 12 Sep 2002 13:47:30 GMT

Zenon Panoussis <oracle@xs4all.nl> wrote:

> Half an hour ago a team of copyright infringement
> investigators and computer experts, four in total,
> left Karin's place after finishing scientology's
> latest raid against me and the very first one
> against Karin. They had arrived two and a half
> hours earlier in the company of two policemen, with
> a search warrant signed by the public prosecutor.

I find it extremely worrying that the prosecution service and police in Amsterdam allow themselves to be used by intimidating crooks like this. We know that $cientology loves to use intimidation to silence their critics... but fortunately recently their threats have been more bark than bite.

What has happened to freedom of speech in Holland if you can't stand up and say that $cientology is an evil, criminal, brainwashing scam? And provide it with their own laughable documents?

I was reminded last night, when I watched the CBS/BBC documentary about 11 September, that the $cientologists claimed to have done such good works at Ground Zero. Their attempts to sabotage the work of psychologists helping police and fire officers! Now they WOULD be good grounds for raids on the $cientologists themselves!

Strength to all fighting the menace of $cientology!

Rgds

Martin

From: Zenon Panoussis <oracle@xs4all.nl>
Subject: Re: Raided again
Date: Fri, 13 Sep 2002 01:45:16 +0200
Organization: XS4ALL Internet BV
Message-ID: <alr8un$eru$1@news1.xs4all.nl>

Martin Cleaver wrote:

>

> I find it extremely worrying that the prosecution service and
> police in Amsterdam allow themselves to be used by
> intimidating crooks like this [...]

They do not. I know that scientology has been filing complaints against me to the prosecuror for years now, and I have to assume that what I know is only the top of the iceberg. Put yourself in the prosecutor's shoes.

He knows that the scienos are a bunch of liars, he knows that the complaints are most probably false, but he does have a certain obligation to investigate if the complaints *seem* credible enough. The word "seem" is the key here;

after all, you don't really know what's true unless you do investigate. Scientology has no scruples against lying, so they can easily make a complaint seem credible.

The way I see it, today's raid was based on insufficient suspicion evidence, but humanly it was rather natural and to be expected after all the pressure that scientology has put on the authorities. For all I know, the prosecutor probably thought "Let's search. If we find nothing, then we can definitely tell scientology to go to hell and get rid of them. If we do find something, then they might have been right all along and we have to acknowledge and protect their rights either we like them or not". Strictly speaking this way of arguing is against the law, which requires a certain strength of suspicion before a search (the mere repetition of a complaint does not strengthen it), but from a human point of view it's understandable.

The end result is going to be that the prosecutor will be even more careful next time scientology complains. If he waited four years before acting wrongly this time, he will wait forty-four years before doing the same next time. At the end of the line this *strengthens* the rechtszekerheid of the citizen (and it's really remarkable that English has no word for rechtszekerheid).

> What has happened to freedom of speech in Holland if you can't
> stand up and say that $cientology is an evil, criminal,
> brainwashing scam? And provide it with their own laughable
> documents?

Freedom of speech and copyrights are exceptions to each-other:

freedom of speech is an exception to copyright, but copyright is also an exception to freedom of speech. Besides, criminals have rights too, as scientology's lawyer Ruprecht Hermans accurately pointed out to the court in scientology's case against Karin (which he lost, and see footnote). It's a balance of interests and, as all other balances, it has to be made by humans. It will therefore never be perfect and its standard can only be judged in relative terms. Well, while Dutch justice realy sucks, I am still much happier to be living in Holland than I would be in most other places in the world.

That's very relative, but it's what actually counts.

Z

Note: Hermans pleading at the Hague district court: "The possibly criminal nature of my clients is not relevant to this case". Tsja. Nobody in the audience managed to keep a straight face.

From: Zenon Panoussis <oracle@xs4all.nl>
Subject: Re: Raided again
Date: Fri, 13 Sep 2002 15:48:52 +0200
Organization: XS4ALL Internet BV
Message-ID: <alsqcf$aie$1@news1.xs4all.nl>

Boudewijn van Ingen wrote:

>

> In normal circumstances, I would advise you to find a lawyer, and get
> a 'schadeloosstelling' from the prosecutor's office for what they did.

> If the Dutch "strong arm" is wrong in what it does somehow, the
> victims of those actions are almost automatically entitled to a
> financancial restitution of their damages.

Yeah. There was no physical damage done, they didn't break anything. What's left is the waste of our time and the immaterial damage of invasion of privacy. If you get wrongly arrested and jailed, you get 100 euro per day that you spend in jail. If you are wrongly searched for three hours, how much do you get then? 15 euro? Am I supposed to accept the insult of such a sum on top of the search? I'd rather do without.

Z

From: kspaink@xenu.org (Karin Spaink)
Subject: Re: Raided again
Date: Thu, 12 Sep 2002 16:56:54 +0200
Organization: Marcab Technologies, Inc.
Message-ID: <lga1oucc0fkrevl3sf7v0pesqqtiehik47@news.xs4all.nl>

Johan Wevers <johanw@iae.nl> kindly wrote:

> Zenon Panoussis wrote:

> > Half an hour ago a team of copyright infringement
> > investigators and computer experts, four in total,
> > left Karin's place after finishing scientology's
> > latest raid against me and the very first one
> > against Karin. They had arrived two and a half
> > hours earlier in the company of two policemen, with
> > a search warrant signed by the public prosecutor.

> Were those people scientologists, or were they appionted by the
> prosecuter?

The latter. And uhm, they even got OT-3 t-shirts afterwards, so that they would not have to leave empty-handed :)

> > Fine. They found nothing. There was nothing to find.

> I hope you made them feel like complete idiots so they won't
> do that again very soon.

We have no reason to insult *them*. They behaved utterly friendly and correctly. But I do think that the next series of complaints from CoS about Z or me will be discarded rather quickly by the prosecutor.

> > As for the intimidation and harassment value of the
> > search, we are thinking about a suitable revenge.
> > A few pickets, better organised and more spectacular
> > than what we have done so far, seems appropriate.

> Hmmm. Now they have left the Nieuwezijdse Voorburgwal and that
> bookstore, I thought the public presence of Co$ in The Netherlands
> had reduced to practically zero which makes picketing only possible
> when they organize something. Or am I mistaken here?

They have a new & fancy building at Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal.

> After all, I haven't been in Amsterdam since November 2001.

Perhaps we can organise something that can remedy that :)

groet, Karin Spaink

-- I write, therefore I am:

http://www.spaink.net/

From: Zenon Panoussis <oracle@xs4all.nl>
Subject: Re: Raided again
Date: Fri, 13 Sep 2002 16:23:24 +0200
Organization: XS4ALL Internet BV
Message-ID: <alssd8$f97$1@news1.xs4all.nl>

Christopher Wood wrote:

> Fascinating. I'm surprised that anybody actually still believes the cult
> on these sorts of matters. Did this have the same feel as your earlier
> raids, or was it qualitatively (and/or quantitatively) different in any
> way?

It was very much different to the first raid, almost exactly six years ago, in that it was carried out in my presence by polite and correct civil servants and not by a bunch of scienos. For those who don't know, McShane himself and Bill Hart, one of the high-end CoS lawyers, had flown in from the US fore the purpose and were allowed by the bailiff to search my apartment in my absence back then.

It was different to the second raid ( http://www.dtek.chalmers.se/~d1dd/cos/pan49.html and http://216.239.39.100/search?q=cache:UAqa5UqJWJkC:wpxx02.toxi.uni-wuerzburg.de/~krasel/CoS/biased/biased.2.24.html+zenon+bailiff+nots+printer+kitchen&hl=en&start=2&ie=UTF-8) in that this raid was non-confrontational and the search team limited itself to carrying out a search order, instead of attempting to carry out a whole enforcement policy as the Swedish bailiff did in December 96.

Z

From: "Anneke Andriessen" <anneke.a@tisacali.nl>
Subject: Spaink
Date: Fri, 13 Sep 2002 19:08:28 +0200
Organization: Tiscali Benelux
Message-ID: <alt624$prm$1@reader1.tiscali.nl>
charset="iso-8859-1"

Karen Spainks' place got raided today by the public prosecutors office (openbaar ministerie) They were looking for material in support of a Scientology church's charge.

See:

http://www.xs4all.nl/~kspaink/

From: kspaink@xenu.org (Karin Spaink)
Subject: Re: Spaink
Date: Fri, 13 Sep 2002 20:22:11 +0200
Organization: Marcab Technologies, Inc.
Message-ID: <3pa4ou48k676md3j68i6pigamjdaars1b7@news.xs4all.nl>

"Anneke Andriessen" <anneke.a@tisacali.nl> kindly wrote:

> Karen Spainks' place got raided today by the public prosecutors office
> (openbaar ministerie)

Yesterday, actually.

>They were looking for material in support of a
> Scientology church's charge.
> See: http://www.xs4all.nl/~kspaink/

My site doesn't have news on the raid (yet). However, the news made the front page of today's edition of Het Parool. Tomorrow, that paper might have a more in-depth article, and I have heard that De Volkskrant will also publish a story.

Meanwhile, you might want to read the report that my lover Zenon wrote about the raid in this same newsgroup. Subject: Raided agian, message-ID: <alpp45$8v9$1@news1.xs4all.nl>

groet, Karin Spaink

-- I write, therefore I am:

http://www.spaink.net/

From: Zenon Panoussis <oracle@xs4all.nl>
Subject: Aftermath
Date: Mon, 16 Sep 2002 12:01:30 +0200
Organization: XS4ALL Internet BV
Message-ID: <3D85ABFA.20901@xs4all.nl>

A few minutes ago I phoned the prosecutor, Wouter van Schaijck, to ask for a copy of the file and, specifically, the exact suspicion against me. I have already been told that I am suspected of copyright infringement in works that belong to the church of scientology, but that's like telling somebody that he is suspected of killing someone.

You need to be much more specific than that; suspected of killing whom, when, how? Thus, I want to know which works I have allegedly infringed upon, when, how.

Well, the prosecutor who ordered the raid doesn't know what exactly I am suspected of. He "doesn't have the file" because the investigating officers have it, so he can't tell me anything. When I pointed out that he can just pick up the phone and tell the investigating officers to give me this information, he started singing on the "it is not usual for a suspect to get the file while the investigation is still pending" tune. I told him that the investigation is pending an interrogation with me and that I will under no circumstances subject myself to any interrogation unless I know specifically what I am suspected of and thus what the subject of the interrogation is. Thus, if he is not telling me what I want and have a right to know and I therefore refuse the interrogation, then the investigation is no longer pending and we get back to square one and he can give me the file. The prosecutor gave me an evasive answer to this and with that we closed the discusssion.

Subsequently I phoned Alex Woord, the investigating officer at Buma-Stemra. I asked the same questions. He said that he can't tell me the exact details of what I am suspected of because he is still waiting for some documents from scientology. I pressed the question and then got to hear that scientology claims to have downloaded some of their material from something that belongs to me, but Alex Woord needs to make an appointment with Nauta Dutilh, scientology's lawyers, to get the copies of what they allegedly downloaded. Only then will he know exactly which materials I am supposed to have spread, from where and when.

In other words: the prosecutor based his decision to raid us on a "grounded suspicion" that was only grounded on the word of scientology's lawyers. Neither the prosecutor nor the investigating officers know which works I supposedly infringed upon, thus at the time of the raid they didn't know what they were looking for. Thus, the raid was nothing more than a fishing expedition.

Bart Middelburg wrote in Saturday's Parool that "they must be out of their Xemu at the public prosecutor's office" and that the prosecutor let himself be mislead by scientology. He was far more right than I ever thought he could be. I imagined that that scientology had lied to the prosecutor, but now it turns out that the prosecutor simply based hos decicion to raid us on scientology's mere allegations, and never made his own assessment of whether there was indeed a *grounded* suspicion or not.

Swell.

I'm phoning the lawyer now. Being misled is one thing, but allowing scientology to make the decisions of the prosecutor is quite another.

Z

From: Zenon Panoussis <oracle@xs4all.nl>
Subject: Re: Aftermath
Date: Tue, 17 Sep 2002 01:58:36 +0200
Organization: XS4ALL Internet BV
Message-ID: <am5r7m$ace$1@news1.xs4all.nl>

ptsc wrote:

>

[prosecutors allowing the CoS to run the show]

> This may create liability on the part of the (apparently) incompetent
> prosecutor. I hope you can make him regret that he apparently
> committed flat-out illegal acts and violated your civil rights just to
> stop some cultists from whining.

I don't want to make him regret anything. I just want to make him (and his colleagues) realise that you can't have it both ways. Either you play by the rules, or you forfeit your right to demand that others play by the rules. Unless you live by the rules that you claim to defend, even when it doesn't suit your lazy nature, you lose your high status and you become just another a crook among crooks.

It's only that I find it a bit difficult to say this to his face on the phone. Politeness, you know, and I don't want the message to drown in the noise of the tone. Him losing some face to the public might be a more efficient way for the message to come across and, besides, if he finally gets the message he could be a good prosecutor, so in that case I'd certainly not want to push the issue any further.

Hope he reads ars. Many a prosecutor and many a judge would have benefited SOOOO by it, but nobody had tipped them about it.

Z

From: ronthewarhero@yahoo.co.uk (Chris Owen)
Subject: Re: Aftermath
Date: 16 Sep 2002 22:46:10 -0700
Message-ID: <f758becc.0209162146.7bb36def@posting.google.com>

ptsc <ptsc AT nym DOT cryptofortress DOT com> wrote in message news:<n8vboucckb6fj4b86pi8rqb7mpk2kpqfc7@4ax.com>...

> On Mon, 16 Sep 2002 12:01:30 +0200, Zenon Panoussis <oracle@xs4all.nl> wrote:
>
> >I'm phoning the lawyer now. Being misled is one thing,
> >but allowing scientology to make the decisions of the
> >prosecutor is quite another.
>
> That's quite astonishing. I can see why the prosecutor is sweating
> bullets. It would have been one thing had the cult's lawyers falsely
> alleged a set of facts which would create a reasonable suspicion
> were they true, and the prosecutor made a decision on this erroneous
> set of facts, having no particular reason to think that lawyers would
> tell material falsehoods to law enforcement officials.
>
> It becomes quite another matter when the prosecutor launches a
> raid based on vague allegations with no particularity, just vague
> statements by a cult that they kind of sort of believe that maybe you
> might be doing something and anyway you're a bad person.
>
> This may create liability on the part of the (apparently) incompetent
> prosecutor. I hope you can make him regret that he apparently
> committed flat-out illegal acts and violated your civil rights just to
> stop some cultists from whining.

One has to wonder what kind of pressure was applied to the prosecutor's office. The rules always seem to be different where Scientology is concerned, don't they?

| Chris Owen - ronthewarhero@OISPAMNOyahoo.co.uk | |---------------------------------------------------------------| | THE TRUTH ABOUT L. RON HUBBARD AND THE UNITED STATES NAVY | | http://www.ronthewarhero.org |

From: Dave Bird <dave@xemu.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Re: Aftermath
Date: Wed, 18 Sep 2002 20:45:41 +0100
Organization: Smelling--nose Dogs for the Anosmic
Message-ID: <oqT4fZBlfNi9EwrQ@xemu.demon.co.uk>

In article<3D85ABFA.20901@xs4all.nl>, Zenon Panoussis <oracle@xs4all.nl>

writes:

>In other words: the prosecutor based his decision to
>raid us on a "grounded suspicion" that was only grounded
>on the word of scientology's lawyers. Neither the prosecutor
>nor the investigating officers know which works I supposedly
>infringed upon, thus at the time of the raid they didn't
>know what they were looking for. Thus, the raid was
>nothing more than a fishing expedition.

You probably have grounds to sue them under the European Convention on Human Rights if it is incorporated into Dutch law, and under various domestic law provisions.

The right to fair trial will include the accused knowing what he is charged with. If they say it would prejudice a continuing investigation, they have to justify this (how would it be prejudicial, what further searches are envisioned, etc). If the investigation is continuing, when or under what circumstances will it conclude so that they can hand the materials over:

if they are "not sure yet", continue asking them every two months and press them to prove that an investigation is continuing; how many officers are assigned to it, what is being done, do they require you in for further interview?

In other words it is never forgotten and never ceases until you get an answer.

Under your right to privacy and domestic law on search and seizure they will have to have what you call GROUNDED SUSPICION [in English law, PROBABLE CAUSE]. If there was a need to act urgently, why was there a need to act urgently: on what grounds? what would happen adversely if they delayed?? They have to exercise due diligence in checking the evidence for allegations made to them.

This guy might end up paying you substantial damages, or losing his job as a prosecutor. And this would be a good thing, as it would discourage them from acting on unchecked allegations in future.

In article<46odou0supuai8ttcd7scslfdbgplp0pie@4ax.com>, ptsc <ptsc@AT.nym> writes:

>You must realize, however, that if he is a good prosecutor
>and a good person, he is already regretting his action and
>has already resolved never to be so reckless again merely
>because someone from a seemingly prestigious law firm
>tells some lies. Even if he is neither, though, the public
>reaction to his conduct should dissuade further actions of
>this nature.

Well, if he has learned his lesson, and is already eager to apologise and compensate Zenon, then that is all to the good.

That is what we want -- a strong inclination not to act on complains without due diligence in checking them first, and a big suspicion about anything coming from Scientology.

-- FUCK THE SKULL OF HUBBARD, AND BUGGER THE DWARF HE RODE IN ON!!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 8====3 (O 0) GROETEN --- PRINTZ XEMU EXTRAWL no real OT has |n| (COMMANDER, FIFTH INVADER FORCE) ever existed .................................................................

STOP PRESS: EIGHTY SEVEN MILLION THIN DIMES FOR WOLLERSHEIM =====>

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