Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, October 10, 1994 TAG: 9410110045
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: GENEVA LENGTH: Medium
Adding to the mystery surrounding the murders and possible suicides, the passports of Joseph di Mambro, a cult leader, and his wife, Jocelyne, were delivered to the French Interior Ministry in Paris.
The ministry would not say if it knew who sent the passports or why.
The bodies of 48 cult followers, some of them shot in the head and hooded with plastic bags, were discovered in the rubble of fires at three chalets and a farm in Switzerland. Five other bodies were found in a charred chalet the cult leaders owned north of Montreal.
Some of the victims obviously were murdered, but Swiss officials left open the possibility that some took their own lives.
Authorities have suggested the fires were set to hide evidence of the deaths. It is not known whether di Mambro, a French-Canadian who lived in Switzerland, and the cult's other leader, Luc Jouret, a Belgian physician who lived in Switzerland and Canada, were among the dead.
The French connection first surfaced Saturday, when police uncovered an intricate incendiary device at an empty villa the cult used in southern France.
There were unconfirmed news reports from Canada and Australia that the two used the group as a front for arms trafficking through Australia and money laundering in Swiss banks.
An official of the Royal Bank of Canada in Ottawa said the bank tipped off Canadian police in July about suspicious activity in an Ottawa account of a cult member.
Bank spokesman David Moorcroft said he was prohibited by law from releasing the account-holder's name, but he said the movement of hundreds of thousands of dollars without evidence of legitimate sources could trigger such a report to police.
Constable Gilles Deziel of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police confirmed that Canadian authorities were investigating reports of money laundering involving members of the Order of the Solar Temple, the cult's name in Canada.
Radio-Canada, citing unidentified sources, said the cult moved hundreds of millions of dollars through some of the world's largest banks from Switzerland to Ottawa, where it said di Mambro had a bank account and his wife signed papers. The di Mambros are listed as tenants in a suburban Ottawa apartment.
Jouret and di Mambro also are linked to other property in Canada.
Canadian police would not comment on the report that the cult was involved in arms trafficking.
by CNB