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EUROPE PRESSED ahead yesterday with ambitious plans to beef up military and foreign policy capabilities but failed to agree on what steps to take against Russia apropos of the war in Chechnya. The convictions were the result of an atmosphere of “religious McCarthyism” in France after an inter- ministerial committee “to fight against sects” had condemned Scientology earlier this year, it said.. It is believed to have eight million disciples in the world and 10,000 in France.The church said yesterday that Mr Delamare had broken the sect’s own rules and been punished internally. The prosecution said victims were tricked or morally blackmailed into buying “dianetic” and “mental science” courses to purify the mind and remove “undesirable sensations” at a cost of pounds 120 an hour.The Church of Scientology, founded by the American science fiction writer L Ron Hubbard in 1954, claims to be able to rescue scientific knowledge from war-like purposes and use it for the moral and physical well-being of the human race. Later, the papers were said to have been shredded in error by a court clerk.Mr Delamare and others were accused of cheating 10 people of sums ranging from pounds 2,400 to pounds 15,000 between 1987 and 1990. That was the third time legal documents in cases against scientologists had disappeared in France in three years, leading to claims that the sect had “penetrated” the French state.

Four other scientologists were convicted of similar offences and given suspended jail sentences. Two were cleared.At their trial in September it was revealed that five boxes of sealed prosecution documents had been mysteriously destroyed. The conviction, the third of its kind involving Scientologists in France, was dismissed by the US-based church as “politically motivated” and “religious McCarthyism”.
Xavier Delamare, former head of the church in the Marseille and Toulon area, was fined pounds 10,000 and given a two-year jail sentence, 18 months of which was suspended. Credit card donations can be made to 0870-6060900 or online at www.dec .uk.

A FORMER official of the Church of Scientology was jailed for six months yesterday after a French court found him guilty of defrauding disciples with bogus and expensive treatments for stress. Aid lorries clog the capital, Bhubaneshwar, lacking clear directions on where to go. India Today magazine said 13,000 tonnes of food, 60,000 saris and other garments and more than pounds 7m of emergency relief remain undistributed.The Disasters Emergency Committee is appealing for funds to help the relief effort in Orissa. One reason for their performance is the fear they may be lynched by angry local people.So while relief continues to pour in from other parts of India and abroad – Britain’s Department of International Development has contributed pounds 1m – much of it is has yet to reach the needy. Several other officials, including district collectors, followed his example and deserted their posts or refused to leave the safety of the town.

A few days after the cyclone, the state’s Chief Secretary, S B Mishra, the top bureaucrat responsible for implementation of policy, took leave and flew to the United States, where his daughter had become ill. With deaths at around 10,000 and rising, and the state belatedly admitting a cholera epidemic is now possible, the Orissa relief effort appears still not to be running smoothly.While MPs compete to have aid directed to their own constituencies and businessmen say the state’s industrial development has been put back 20 years, in the worst-affected areas hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, still lack food and shelter.The state’s administration, not a byword for efficiency at the best of times, appears to have crumbled under the disaster’s impact. Last week 200 residents demonstrated at the sanctuary’s office, demanding protection. But forest officers say forcing the animals back into the sanctuary in the present conditions is impossible.Elsewhere in India, indignation is building at the laggardly relief operation by Orissa’s state government. Until 18 days ago, Chandaka Elephant Sanctuary’s 70km-long fence penned the herds of wild elephant; groves of bamboo provided plentiful food. But when the 250kmh winds struck on 29 October, practically every bamboo was uprooted and in several places the perimeter fence was destroyed.
Now the elephants are hungry and from 10 villages around the sanctuary’s periphery reports are coming in of herds searching for food and terrifying inhabitants.