Category: Deprogramming

A Mississauga doctor and his son are facing charges of kidnapping and forcible confinement after an alleged attempt to deprogram a woman who joined an evangelical Christian group in Hamilton. Meanwhile, members of the Christian group denies allegations of being a religious cult. Hamilton police laid the charges in connection with the alleged abduction of a woman who joined the Dominion Christian Centre (DCC) three years ago. Police say the woman was snatched near the church just before Christmas and held 10 days before she was able to escape. Dr. Renato Brun Del Re, 53, a family physician in Mississauga,

A Burlington family charged with kidnapping believed they were rescuing their daughter from a religious cult when they dragged her off a downtown street seven months ago. “The family believed a church in Hamilton to be a cult and their actions to be an intervention,” Hamilton Detective Dave Brady said yesterday. He declined to identify the family, the woman or the church involved. He added the investigation is continuing and police are expecting to make more arrests, apart from the three family members who were charged this week. The 22-year-old woman was walking to work on Park Street North at

A method of brainwashing terrorists being considered for use in Australia is ineffective and comparable to torture, critics say. The federal government says it is examining the use of “de-programming” after a suggestion from Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty, who studied anti-terrorism strategies in Indonesia. Indonesia is using a former Jemaah Islamiah leader, Malaysian-born Nasir bin Abbas, to help de-program terrorists. The former leader talks to arrested terrorist group members to open their minds to more moderate Islam, as well as extract information on terrorist operations. The process, which Mr Keelty likened to rehabilitating drug addicts, also has been

WASHINGTON (AP)–Saudi Arabia, known for harsh criminal penalties such as beheadings, is trying a gentler approach to get information from some al-Qaida captives. Saudi interrogators often bring clerics and a Quran to their prison interviews to establish a religious connection, a technique that has proved successful in eliciting information from terrorist suspects and reorienting them to less violent religious beliefs. The tactic, similar to the way cult deprogrammers work in the United States, has impressed American counterparts enough that Saudi intelligence was permitted to use some of the principles on their citizens being held at the U.S. detention camp at