Local News in Brief : Santa Ana : Lawyer Says Guru Was Coerced Into Guilty Plea

Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, who once led a 3,000-member commune in Antelope, Ore., was coerced by federal officials into pleading guilty to violating U.S. immigration laws three years ago when he fled the country, his attorney said Monday in Santa Ana.

Rajneesh, whose followers sold a meditation center in Laguna Beach in 1986, hopes to reverse his guilty plea through a lawsuit and return to the United States to spread his message of love and harmony, said Swami Prem Niren, a San Francisco attorney.

Niren was making his fourth stop on a nine-city tour to announce plans to file the suit next year in Oregon.

The guru also now believes that he was poisoned by U.S. officials while detained in October, 1985, in Oklahoma County Jail in Oklahoma City, Niren said.

Rajneesh lives in the Rajneeshdam ashram in Poona, India. But he remains weak, fragile and susceptible to illness, Niren said. Tests showed that he does not possess antibodies of acquired immune deficiency syndrome but may have been poisoned by thallium, a type of rat poisoning, Niren said.

When he was released from prison, the guru was disoriented, but a doctor’s poison diagnosis made him recall a meal in prison that made him ill and nauseous, Niren said.

Niren also said Rajneesh has been denied entrance into 21 other countries because of economic sanctions threatened by U.S. officials. He declined to reveal evidence of those sanctions.