Trial of Michel Tabachnik

In 2001 Swiss composer and orchestral conductor Michel Tabachnik was tried in the Grenoble criminal court, over his involvement in the Order of the Solar Temple (OTS) religious movement. The Solar Temple was an esoteric and eclectic new religious movement and secret society, often described as a cult, that had been involved in several high profile mass-murder suicides in the 1990s. Tabachnik was accused of brainwashing the followers into the suicides and having known about the plans beforehand. Tabachnik was the only person tried in the aftermath of the Solar Temple deaths; he was found not guilty in the 2001 trial and in the 2006 appeal trial.

Tabachnik had been involved in the movement since 1977, and had written Les Archées, some of their higher level esoteric texts. He was highly involved in its early years, but had gradually moved away from the order in the years prior to the suicides. Following the first suicide, Tabachnik's involvement was realized by investigators, and he was interviewed by the Swiss police. The Swiss investigations did not establish any connection between Tabachnik and the 1994 deaths, and his involvement in the group then received little public notice. After the second mass suicide in France in 1995, several journalists implicated Tabachnik in the deaths, accusing him of being more involved than had been suggested and saying the group had reunified behind him. The examining magistrate into the second set of deaths, Luc Fontaine, placed him under investigation on 12 June 1996.

He was charged with conspiracy to commit murder and participation in a criminal association, with prosecutors arguing that his writings had brainwashed the followers into the suicides and that he had known about the plans for mass suicide beforehand. Tabachnik was defended by Francis Szpiner and Carolyn Toby. Tabachnik was found not guilty on 25 June 2001 on the basis that there had been no significant or conclusive proof uncovered that Tabachnik had orchestrated the killings, and his writings were deemed unlikely to have influenced the members. The public prosecutor appealed the criminal court's decision, and an appeal trial was scheduled, but delayed repeatedly. In a second trial from 24 October from 30 October 2006, the appeals court upheld the lower court's ruling, and Tabachnik was acquitted a second time in December 2006.

The failure to convict Tabachnik disappointed French politicians and the anti-cult movement. Several family members of the dead were also unsatisfied, not entirely because they believed Tabachnik was guilty, but for some of them due to their belief in outside involvement in the killings.