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Israel Orders 11 U.S. Doomsday Suspects Out Eleven members of a fanatical religious cult from the United States were ordered to leave Israel after authorities determined that the cultists might commit acts of violence at the end of 1999. By Daniel Sternoff, Reuters Start Date: 1/4/99 PETAH TIKVA, Israel -- Israel on Jan 4, 1999 ordered the deportation of 11 Americans alleged to be members of a doomsday Christian cult plotting millennium violence to hasten the second coming of Jesus. Police brought three other alleged cult members before a magistrate in Petah Tikva, central Israel, asking that they be held for further questioning on suspicion of conspiring to commit "the most serious of crimes that harm state security." The group of 14 Americans -- six of them children -- was arrested on Sunday on suspicion of being part of the Concerned Christians cult. "The Ministry of Interior issued 11 deportation orders for the members of the Denver-based Concerned Christians cult," a ministry spokeswoman said, without specifying when the deportation would take place. Police sources said the three men taken to court -- John Bayles, Eric Malesic, 36, and Terry Smith, 42 -- were being questioned on suspicion they had information about other members of Concerned Christians in and out of Israel. At separate hearings, the magistrate ordered that each of the three be held for two more days. All three sat quietly in court, none of them raising a protest. "I'm not here to hurt anybody. I don't feel I pose a threat of physical harm to anyone," Bayles, a bushy-blond-haired man wearing wire-rimmed glasses, told the court. "I don't feel I have committed any conspiracy." About 60 members abandoned their jobs and homes in Colorado several months ago and went missing. Group leader Monte Kim Miller, who has prophesied that he will die on the streets of Jerusalem during 1999, was not in Israel, police said. The Interior Ministry said members of the cult arrived in Israel in separate groups during September. It was unclear how many group members were now in Israel. The arrests were the first since Israeli security authorities set up a task force last year to deal with possible violence by cults and messianic groups in the Holy Land as the turn of the millennium approaches. A police source said the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation provided information that helped lead to the arrests. A police spokesman said they had planned to carry out unspecified "extreme acts of violence" on Jerusalem's streets. For all three suspects appearing in court, authorities had removed their shoelaces, a routine procedure in trying to prevent a prisoner from committing suicide. The judge denied a request by the Shin Bet secret service, whose agents were involved in the arrests, to conduct the hearings behind closed doors but agreed to keep secret a police report detailing the suspicions against alleged cult members. A U.S. embassy spokesman said American officials were trying to get "consular access" to the suspects. The 14 Americans were arrested on Sunday in their rented apartments in two Jerusalem suburbs where they lived. Other residents described them as nice, quiet neighbours. Police said on Sunday the suspected cultists intended to carry out violence "with the aim of beginning a process that would bring about the second coming of Jesus." A Colorado-based cult monitoring group said in October that relatives had been searching for as many as 60 missing members of the Concerned Christians. The Shin Bet barred Bayles, the first of the suspects appearing in court, from seeing a lawyer. An Israeli public defender argued for and won a right to represent the other two. The lawyer, Eran Avital, said both told him they belonged to the Concerned Christians but denied being a danger to themselves or to anyone else. Neither had a criminal past, he said. Asked by Avital about the suspicions against him, Smith, a thin man with shaggy, greying hair, was overheard to say: "That is totally denied." Scriptures say Jesus will return to make everlasting peace after a cataclysmic war between the biblical armies of Gog and Magog at Armageddon in the Holy Land. [Disclaimer: This article is copyright (c) Reuters. The information contained in Reuters reports may not be republished, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without prior written permission from Reuters. This text is posted in the public interest.] Excelsior, Michael Lindemann's new novel (written under the pen name Michael Paul), depicts a wholly plausible near future in which human cloning is both widespread and widely abused; terrorists have access to target-specific biological weapons; recreational space travel is commonplace; and mounting pressures of global climate change, environmental decline, population growth and civil unrest inspire radical new approaches to urban security. Built by Frontier on a Macintosh on 6/17/00; 11:55:01 AM. Web Comments - Produced by Larry Lowe Served 1292 times since 1/4/99.

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