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Germany to Try Scientology Ban
Lawmakers order domestic spies to gather a decade of data on the group
By Michael O'Connor
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Posted Dec 7, 07 10:22 PM CST
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(Newser)
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German ministers accused Scientology of being unconstitutional today and took steps to ban it from the country, Der Spiegel reports. They ordered spies to assemble a dossier on the group, based on 10 years of surveillance, to support the ban. Scientologists were outraged, and called themselves victims of "on-going and never-ending discrimination," the BBC reports.
Germany stepped up scrutiny of Scientology this year after it opened a new center in Berlin and boosted German membership to 6,000. As residents complained about invasive recruitment, more lawmakers blasted the group as a money-making cult. But Scientology, which was recently accepted in Spain, accused them of being "completely out of step with the rest of the world."