After 18 years of instructions, procedures and attempts to dilute (successfully) the course of the trial in the case of OKC and Robert Spatz, here is that the axe has fallen: inadmissibility of prosecution.
The whole trial has therefore fallen apart: The Brussels Court of Appeal ruled that, following errors committed by a judicial expert, a deputy prosecutor and the judge of the first trial, there was “an irreparable breach of the rights of the defence”.
All of them have in one way or another, whether consciously or not, committed procedural errors.
Already the first trial was a bad attempt to close a trial that could not be closed otherwise, the appeal in the end was a piece of cake for the defence lawyers of a predator-pedophile-pervert-narcissist. The whole trial was intoxicated from the beginning, obviously the civil parties were not aware of how much otherwise one would have directly forgotten Belgium and prepared an adapted strategy taking into account the chronic non-functioning of the Belgian Justice.
(BELGA) = The 16th chamber of the Court of Appeal of Brussels, presided by Luc Maes, declared, on Tuesday, the proceedings inadmissible in the case of the Ogyen Kunsang Choling Buddhist community (OKC). The religious community, some of its leaders and its spiritual leader Robert Spatz were prosecuted for, among other things, financial offences, breaches of labour legislation but also for taking children hostage.
The court of appeal noted several irregularities committed during the investigation but also during the proceedings before the first judge, which “irremediably affected the defendants’ right to a fair trial”.
The court therefore declared the proceedings inadmissible and dismissed each of the 36 persons who had filed a civil claim for compensation.
The court first of all considered that the chartered accountant who had been appointed to analyse the accounts of OKC and the companies attached to it had “exceeded the limits of its referral and showed partiality”. He had, in particular, shared his views with the investigators, worked on the latter’s premises and had taken the liberty of writing in his reports, which concluded that forgery and money laundering offences had been committed, that “Robert Spatz was running OKC in an occult manner”.
The court then noted that several defendants had been heard during the investigation in total violation of the Salduz ruling, which requires that a suspect always be heard in the presence of a lawyer. It also severely criticised the first prosecutor in charge of the case, who “knowingly substituted himself for an investigating judge” by conducting a judicial investigation when a judicial inquiry was already under way into similar facts, and who “organised leaks on social networks”.
By this, he “knowingly and wilfully violated the rights of the defence”, the court established.
Finally, the court considered that the reasonable time to be judged had expired, which had already been noted by the indictment division before referral to the criminal court.
In this case, the Ogyen Kunzang Choling Buddhist Community (OKC), its spiritual leader Robert Spatz and some of its leaders were accused of financial offences, labour law offences and also of taking children hostage.
The latter was also charged with sexual abuse. This community was founded in Brussels in 1972 by Robert Spatz, known as the Lama Kunzang Dorje. This charismatic man had gathered around him many people in search of spirituality, especially couples with children, who were attracted by the idea of living in community.
Between the 1980s and 2000, the members’ children had been sent to OKC properties in Portugal and France.
Some of them reported having been abused there. Meanwhile, the parents were working in Brussels in restaurants and shops run by companies linked to the OKC, without being paid, according to the survey.
In 1997, a Franco-Belgian operation carried out searches in the Brussels region and in Castellane, France.
An in-depth investigation was launched into various alleged offences, ranging from financial offences to moral offences, and resulted in the community and some of its leaders being sent back to prison.
Source: Belga
