Zenon Panoussis
|
|
Zenon Panoussis (born 1956) is known for publishing some of the secret documents from the Church of Scientology on the Internet. He was born in Egypt, grew up in Greece and came to Sweden in 1974, where he later became a naturalized citizen. He moved to The Netherlands in 1997, to live with his partner, Karin Spaink, who he met in the course of the battle against the Church of Scientology. In 2003 the couple separated.
Zenon-panoussis-karin-spaink-leipzig-2003.jpg
In late 1996, he appeared on the newsgroup alt.religion.scientology and, even though he had never participated in the online battle between Scientology and its critics before and no one knew him, he blatantly posted the copyrighted documents of Scientology known as NOTs ("New Era Dianetics for Operating Thetans," or "New OT") to the newsgroup and invited the organization to sue him. Scientology certainly did so. As they had done so in 1995, lawyers for the organization filed a civil lawsuit for copyright infringement and convinced the court to order a raid of Panoussis' home and the seizure of his computer. Panoussis defended himself in court without legal assistance, and it was quickly learned by both Scientology and its online opponents that Panoussis was very familiar with the workings of the legal system in his home country of Sweden.
In his defense, Panoussis invoked a Swedish Constitutional Right known as offentlighetsprincipen. This is a provision of the Swedish Constitution that guarantees access to public documents in order to prevent corruption and fraud, and it is considered a basic civil right in Sweden. (The American equivalent to this law would be the Freedom of Information Act.) Panoussis turned over a copy of the NOTs documents to the office of the Swedish Parliament and, by law, copies of the documents were available for anyone from the public to see, at any time he or she wished.
In the years between 1997 and 2000, Scientology made numerous attempts to remove the NOTS documents from the Parliament offices. Repeated requests to have the documents sealed were denied, and the documents were actually stolen from the Parliament office on two separate occasions. (Spokesmen for Scientology denied that the organization was behind the thefts.) Scientology even convinced the United States Congress to get involved in the affair, and diplomatic influence from the offices of various members of Congress was used to attempt to convince the Parliament to remove the NOTs documents.
Panoussis put up a tough defense in court, but the ultimate verdict was against him. In a 1998 ruling he was ordered to pay damages of ca $1,000 and legal costs over $200,000 (American), an amount that he was unable to afford. The ruling was affirmed on appeal.
After three years of repeated requests and demands by Scientology to remove the NOTs documents from the public record, in the year 2000 Parliament finally enacted a clause of Swedish secrecy law to order the NOTs documents sealed away from public view. This move provoked a number of legal scholars in Sweden to issue protests, noting that the move effectively meant that copyright law overruled the Constitution of Sweden. Debate on the matter has not ended as of 2002.