ALMOST THIRTY years after the mysterious death of 14-year-old Kalinka Bamberski, the trial began in Paris yesterday of a German doctor accused of raping and murdering her.
The French girl was found dead in her bed one morning in July 1982 while spending the summer with her mother and then-stepfather, Dieter Krombach, in Germany.
Mr Krombach, a Bavarian, has always denied all charges against him, but admitted to injecting Kalinka with an iron compound to help her tan more easily.
He was cleared by a German court of killing Kalinka at the house in Lindau, Bavaria, but was then tried in absentia in 1995 in France, where he was found guilty and sentenced to 15 years.
Germany decided against any extradition, however, meaning the GP remained free across the border. The French ruling was later thrown out by the European Court of Justice on the basis that Mr Krombach had not received a fair defence.
For 27 years, the victim’s father, André Bamberski, waged a high-profile campaign to bring to justice the man he believes raped and killed his daughter, and fulfil what he says is a posthumous vow he made to her.
He hired private detectives and built a huge archive of documents related to the case.
In 1997 Mr Krombach pleaded guilty in a German court to sedating and sexually abusing a 16-year-old patient and was sentenced to two years in prison. He was banned from practising but, after his release, continued until he was jailed for 18 months in 2006 for operating without a medical licence.
But there seemed little prospect of him appearing in a French court in connection with Kalinka’s death until a twist in the story 18 months ago.
In October 2009, Mr Krombach was abducted from his home in Bavaria, bound, gagged, driven across the border and dropped outside a courthouse in Mulhouse, eastern France. André Bamberski was arrested and charged over the kidnapping, but he denies being involved.
However, French investigators duly reopened the case against Mr Krombach. They spent more than a year re-examining the evidence and yesterday a new trial against the GP – now 75 – began in Paris.
On the first day of hearings, Mr Krombach’s lawyers called for an adjournment and highlighted the illegal action that brought their client to France.
However, they failed in their attempts to stop the trial on the grounds of his kidnapping, with the French courts noting that the Nazi Klaus Barbie and Carlos the Jackal were tried in France after being kidnapped abroad.
“Dieter Krombach is not Klaus Barbie,” Yves Levano, one of his lawyers, said yesterday.
Mr Bamberski, now 73, said he hoped for a fair trial.