Europe / Scientologists fight in the streets and courts of Europe IPS 11.6.1997 DUBLIN - European soccer chiefs watching last month's UEFA cup final second leg were enraged. Not by the goals, but by what was pasted up behind them: advertisements for the controversial Church of Scientology. The game's European ruling body now says that the host club, top Italian team Inter Milan will be fined if they admit they agreed to allow the group to place banners behind the goals for the May 21 match. It was only the latest spat in Europe's increasingly bizarre war of words and writs against the Church of Scientology, itself a peculiar mix of science fiction, old sailor's lore, and psychological "self-improvement" techniques. In France, 15 members are appealing in Lyon their conviction for involuntary manslaughter and corruption charges following the March 1988 suicide of Patrice Vic, a 31-year-old member of the group. In Germany today, the government said its intelligence services will extend their surveillance of the Church of Scientology from two states to the whole of the country. German Interior Minister Manfred Kanther says the group's activities violate Germany's democratic institutions. He has asked German intelligence to "immediately take all necessary steps to shed light on the sect's activities." And in Dublin the group has become the focus of a campaign by a family who says their son was "brainwashed" by the group. The charges have been matched in vitriol by the Church of Scientology itself. It has repeated its charges that the German government was behaving "like Nazis" by "persecuting" the group. Heber Jentzsch, president of the Los Angeles-based church said in a statement today that Germany was following in the footsteps of "the brown-shirted bullies of the 1930s" by authorizing their spies to track members of a religious group. Several celebrities, including Hollywood film stars John Travolta and Tom Cruise and jazz pianist Chick Corea belong to the group, which has an estimated 1,200 churches, missions, and groups worldwide and assets estimated at $150 million. Germany regards the Church of Scientology as a commercial enterprise, the Vatican says it is a sect, and France denies it legal status as a religion. However Britain and the U.S. allow it tax breaks as a recognized faith. Founded by the late U.S. science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard in the 1950s, the Church of Scientology has been investigated by the courts in several countries for alleged fraud and illegal medical practice. In Dublin earlier this week, there were protests by the family and friends of 24-year-old Odhran Fortune outside the sect's Dianetics & Scientology office in the city center. Odhran Fortune joined the Church of Scientology three years ago when he was working in Copenhagen, and his family say they have brainwashed him. "He was an extrovert, now he's an introvert," his mother, Ann Fortune, told IPS. When he came home to visit them in December, they were worried about his health. He looked like "skin and bones." There are only 200 Scientologists in Ireland, but as everywhere else they have fought back furiously. As Fortune's parents protested outside the shop on June 9, a counter demonstration was hastily organized. Tougher action followed the next day when the Church served an Irish High Court injunction on the family preventing them from protesting within 10 yards of the premises or from "in any way threatening, assaulting or intimidating" members of the Church. A similar injunction applies on the Fortunes in Britain. "This is actually just religious oppression, that is what it is," member John Lynch told IPS. "Scientology is a minority religion here and this carry-on is religious harassment. That is what it is." The hard-line defense is typical of the Scientologists' response to charges. Last year prominent supporters of the sect in the United States took out a full page advertisement in the International Herald Tribune condemning German policy towards its activities. Odhran Fortune himself phoned Irish state radio from an undisclosed location in Britain on June 9 to say that he was happy to be back with the Church. He said his family had detained him at their home in Gorey, County Wexford, for five months before he was able to phone a fellow Church member and ask for help. It was "absurd" that he had to choose "between my religion and my family," he said. Gerard Ryan, the member of the Church of Scientology who had collected Fortune in Wexford, said that media was hostile to the group and lacked evidence of wrongdoing. "All that has been said against us is allegation after allegation after allegation," he told IPS. Both Fortune and Ryan blamed the work of so-called "deprogrammers" -- supposed "experts" in weaning cult members away from dependency on their cults -- for turning families against church members. Ryan called them "Christian fundamentalists." Other religious cults, such as Ananda Marga and Rev. Sun Yung Moon's Unification Church have also been treated unfairly, he added. But Father Martin Tierney, an Irish expert on cults, said of the Church of Scientology on state radio: "I personally think it's a complete counterfeit. I don't think it's rooted in any reality, scientific, medical, or religious." Tierney said that for new recruits, joining the Church was like winning a lottery ticket. They were surrounded by loving friends as long as they accepted everything they were told. If they did not accept any of the Church's teaching, the disagreement would be linked to something that was wrong with their personality. A caller to the radio program, the Pat Kenny Show, who knew a friend who broke away from the Church of Scientology, described being part of the group as "an addiction to peer pressure." "When you're leaving the circle, you're breaking the circle of friendship and love," he said. Odhran Fortune's family says they are determined to continue their protests until their son is returned to them. "We're going to continue forever and ever and ever," said his brother Diarmuid. "We're not stopping, put it that way."