Zenon Panoussis vs.
Cult of Scientology
Zenon Panoussis
Karin Spaink
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September 14th 1998 Karin Spaink wrote to alt.religion.scientology:
Today the ruling in Zenon's main case was delivered. The ruling is 56 pages long and Zenon has by now only had time to read the first few pages. 10.000 SEK (Swedish crowns) currently equals 1206 US dollars or 713 UK pounds; 1.274.500 SEK equals 153.647 US dollars or 90.866 UK pounds. RTC had asked for 25.000 SEK damages (3.014 USD or 1.782 UKP) and 7.684.581 SEK in legal costs (926.410 USD or 547.880 UKP). BackgroundZenon Panoussis posted the "secret" NOTs to the newsgroup alt.religion.scientology on August 20th 1996. One can only suspect that the Cult of Scientology (CoS) erroneous assumed that American law applies in Sweden, like Europe just was some kind of banana republic probably belonging to them. Hey, they were the first ones on the moon, some fly droppings on the map up in the north would be no match for Helana K. Kobrin and her OT powers!Standard prosedure; raid, sue and destroy! The plan was good, Hubbard would have been proud of his flock of sheep. On September 4, representatives of Scientology entered Zenon's apartment and seized his hard drives and disks. A lawsuit was filed against him, claiming about $8,000 (US) in damages. Zenon was not home at the time of the raid. Apparently, Scientology considered this case to be so important that they flew Warren McShane all the way from the United States to be present at this raid. |
The Swedish Parliament
Scientologist sitting all day "reading" the NOTs so that others can't borrow them. |
To everyone's surprise, it turned out that Zenon is in fact very
proficient with the legal system in his country. Zenon filed 224 pages of OT and NOTs in court and
CoS immediately demanded that the court case be placed under "secrecy" -- but that motion was turned
down by the court. First foot bullet; both OT and NOTs are public available documents in Sweden, anybody
in the world can order them from the Swedish Parliament (picture). Only cost is postage. In June 1998
Swedish court ruled that the documents can not be sealed, meaning anybody in the whole world can order
the Scientology "secrets" from the Parliament in Sweden! The ruling is final.
Later CoS tried to block access to the reading room in the Parliament where the documents were available
for public display, NOTs were stolen from the Parliament, CoS tried to lobby the Parliament to change the
Swedish constitution, they staked out Zenon's apartment, made strange phonecalls to his friends and family
-- but all efforts only resulted in CoS becoming the laughing stock of the Swedish media.
When the story about Zenon reached Norway it inspired me to start this project -- Operation Clambake.
Cartoon by WAA |