Campaigner convicted

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32661, 17 July 1971, Page 17

Campaigner convicted

<N Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright > STUTTGART, July 16.

A Stuttgart court has imposed a two-year suspended prison sentence for fraud on the West German who for years has waged a campaign to prove that Jesus was alive when taken from the cross and laid in His tomb.

Hans Naber, aged 49, who writes under the pseudonym, Kurt Bema, is the head of the Zurich-based International Foundation for the Holy Shroud. The foundation claims that blood marks on the shroud prove beyond all doubt that Jesus was alive when taken from the cross, and that the Roman Catholic Church has done all it can to suppress this fact. The Stuttgart court found

Naber guilty of defrauding creditors of 270,000 marks (about $66,400). It found that he had pretended to be financially well-off as president of the foundation when asking for loans to further its work, and had promised high interest but had known all along that he had no means of paying the interest on time. His only source of income had been irregular donations to the foundation. The court held, in Naber’s favour, that he was not out to enrich himself, but was trying by all means to spread the belief that obsessed him. Because his books and the foundation, which he began in 1964, had not had the success hoped for, Naber had resorted to cunning confidence tricks from 1964 to 1968, the court ruled.