Suspected cult leader faces second trial

[icymist]

The Swiss orchestral conductor, Michel Tabachnik, is again on trial to answer charges of "criminal conspiracy" in the deaths of 16 members of a doomsday cult.

The trial in France takes place four years after he was acquitted of conspiring to brainwash 74 followers of the Order of the Solar Temple into accepting death by occult ritual.

Prosecutors appealed against the ruling, and on Tuesday a court in the city of Grenoble reopened the proceedings. The trial is expected to last six weeks.

The new charges are in relation to 16 cult members, three of them children, whose charred remains were discovered in the French Alps near Grenoble in December 1995.

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