Horror trip to Florida
Clearwater, USA
August 7, 2000
DER SPIEGEL 32/2000
[English translation]
Ursula Caberta, Director of the Work Group on Scientology in the
Hamburg Interior Agency, had to leave the USA in a hurry. Caberta had
wanted to spend a one-week vacation in Florida during which time she met
with Scientology opponents Stacy Brooks and Bob Minton and took part in
a press conference on the practices of the psycho-concern. Then she
unexpectedly left the country one day earlier than planned. The journey
to the Sunshine State had turned out to be a horror trip: Caberta had no
sooner landed at the airport in Tampa than she was received by
Scientologists screaming "Nazi go home"; she was subsequently
followed at every turn. Then German software businessman Hubert Heller,
who lives in the USA, sued Caberta for 75,000 dollars in damages.
Allegedly a major contract from German company POS Partner Gmbh had
slipped through his fingers after the company had presented him with a
so-called "sect filter" - a "security statement" (Caberta)
in which the signer asserts that he does not operate according to the
"technology" of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard.
The German consul general in Florida urged that she leave: Caberta
had had a summons to a deposition by Scientology attorneys shoved under
her hotel room door. It said she would have to sit through a five-hour
hearing in the business's center in Clearwater.
It had to do with the case of Lisa McPherson, who died under
unexplained circumstances in the USA, to which Caberta said she could
not make a statement. She left the country in secret "before
anything worse happened." Caberta lost her belief in the American
legal system. She had never experienced anything like that before.
"One hears about that only in dictatorships."
[Picket photo from Spiegel magazine]
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