Killing of Kalinka Bamberski

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The killing of Kalinka Bamberski in 1982 was a cross-border criminal case in Germany and France that caused a sensation for several decades. The driving force in the case was Kalinka's father André Bamberski, who was left with the unclear circumstances surrounding the death of his 14-year-old daughter. A judgment imposed in France in 1995 against Kalinka's stepfather Dieter Krombach for bodily harm resulting in death could not be carried out because Germany refused to extradite . The judgment was later overturned due to a procedural error. In order to still be able to achieve a final conviction, Bamberski arranged for Krombach to be kidnapped to France in 2009. There Krombach was again and this time legally sentenced to 15 years imprisonment for bodily harm resulting in death. Bamberski was for kidnapping to imprisonment suspended sentence of one year.

Life death

Kalinka Bamberski (born on August 5, 1967 in Casablanca , Morocco; died on July 10, 1982 in Lindau on Lake Constance ) was a French citizen . Her father André Bamberski is the son of Polish immigrants and (now retired) accountants from Toulouse . Her mother Danielle Gonnin separated from Kalinka's father and was then married from 1977 to 1984 to Dieter Krombach, a German internist , born in Dresden in 1935 as the son of a Wehrmacht officer .

Kalinka was found dead on July 10, 1982 in the house of her stepfather Dieter Krombach in Lindau, where she and her younger brother Nicolas spent the holidays with her mother and stepfather. All four know each other from their time together in Morocco, where Kalinka and her younger brother were born.

Krombach said he discovered the 14-year-old girl dead in her bed that morning. The evening before, Kalinka complained of "feeling unwell" and received an iron injection from him. The next morning around 10 a.m. he found Kalinka dead in her bed. Rigor mortis have already existed. He then injected some medication into her heart and lower leg for the purpose of resuscitation. The doctor later added that he had also given her a sedative to help her fall asleep.

At the insistence of her stepfather, Kalinka's body was taken to the morgue immediately after her death was determined without the prior consultation of the criminal police, which is customary in the case of unclear deaths .

autopsy

First autopsy

The autopsy of the body took place two days later on behalf of the Kempten public prosecutor's office in the Memmingen city hospital and was carried out by District Court Doctor Höhmann together with Senior Doctor Dohmann. Later, the content of the autopsy report was to be decisive for the course of the public prosecutor's investigations and the legal proceedings initiated by André Bamberski in Germany.

In the autopsy report, the probable time of death is given as "between three and four o'clock in the morning" and it is stated that a clear cause of death cannot be determined.

Krombach's alleged attempt at resuscitation by administering a psychostimulant ( nikethamide ), a cardiac glycoside ( β-acetyldigoxin ) and an antiarrhythmic ( verapamil ) was commented on by forensic doctors as follows: “The administration of further medication for the purpose of resuscitation in a person already suffering from rigor mortis seems grotesque. ”The choice of medication, the location of the injections and the time of treatment if the rigor mortis are recognizable“ seem strange ”.

The autopsy report shows that immediately after the dissection, Krombach sought contact with the coroners and pointed out that "excessive exposure to the sun while surfing during the day could also have caused death". In the present case, however, this hypothesis is described by the autos as "can be excluded with certainty" because the course of the evening hours described by Krombach until late at night cannot be used as a justification for explaining the onset of death (malregulation due to intense solar radiation).

On the evening of the death, Krombach had given his stepdaughter a cobalt ferrlecite injection because Kalinka had told him that her tan was not satisfactory. Krombach later also claimed that the injection was supposedly indicated for the treatment of anemia that existed in Kalinka. The autopsy commented on the injection given by ruling out a causal connection with the death of a healthy 14-year-old girl, and merely indicated that the treatment goal stated by Krombach (intensifying the tan) could not be achieved in this way .

According to the autopsy report, an approximately 1 cm long, forcibly induced skin tear was found in the vulva area near the anus . Smeary whitish substances were found inside the vagina . No further examination of the girl's genital area for traces of sperm or other foreign liquids was carried out and it was also not determined whether Kalinka was still a virgin.

Further examinations by three doctors at the insistence of his father André Bamberski showed that the cause of death could no longer be determined. The investigation by the German pharmacologist Peter Schönhofer revealed that she may have died from the cobalt ferrlecite injection given by Krombach on the evening of the death incident.

In his statement, Schönhofer stated:

  • The intravenous administration of iron is only indicated in the case of laboratory-confirmed anemia and only if there is an oral intolerance, which is not the case here. This preparation has never helped anyone to tan and one can conclude from this that Krombach by no means respected the rules of medicine and committed a malpractice.
  • It is a dangerous drug that must be injected under medical supervision: the patient must lie down after a meal and be monitored for the following hours. Two undesirable side effects can occur: on the one hand, immediate spontaneous reactions such as drop in blood pressure, heart activity, shortness of breath, and on the other hand further reactions such as fever, pain and nausea, vomiting.

On August 17, 1982, the Kempten public prosecutor closed its investigation one month after Kalinka's death .

Second autopsy

Kalinka Bamberski was buried in France. An exhumation on December 4, 1985 in France revealed that Kalinka's genitals had since decayed or had been removed during the autopsy in Germany. The termination of the investigation was finally confirmed by the Munich Higher Regional Court five years later . Bamberski's lawsuit enforcement proceedings were also unsuccessful in court.

First conviction of Krombach

Under French criminal procedure law, any foreigner who commits a crime against a French citizen outside of France can be prosecuted under French law. Since Kalinka Bamberski was French, the French criminal justice system had jurisdiction.

André Bamberski filed a criminal complaint against Krombach with the French authorities, whereupon charges of intentional homicide were brought before the Paris jury court (Cour d'assises) . June 5, 1993 Krombach was in his home in Lindau, both the prosecution and in the civil action raised action for damages delivered. The French court ordered Krombach to appear in person and issued an arrest warrant for the defendant in order to force his presence at the main hearing. Since Krombach still did not appear for the main hearing, the jury prohibited Krombach's lawyers from appearing on his behalf and declared the defenses they had submitted to be inadmissible. By judgment of March 9, 1995, Krombach was sentenced in absentia by the Paris jury to 15 years imprisonment for bodily harm resulting in death. On March 13, 1995, Krombach was also sentenced by the Paris jury to pay Bamberski FRF 350,000 , of which FRF 250,000 in reparation for non-pecuniary damage and FRF 100,000 for the reimbursement of court costs.

At the request of André Bamberski, the Kempten Regional Court (Allgäu) ordered that the judgment of the Paris jury court be provided with an enforcement clause. Krombach's appeal against this was rejected by the Higher Regional Court. The Federal Court of Justice (BGH), which was then called upon by Krombach, first submitted the appeal to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) for consultation .

On June 29, 2000, the Federal Court of Justice finally declared the judgment of the Paris jury court to be unenforceable because the defendant's right to be heard had been violated. In the meantime, Krombach had been arrested on January 7, 2000 while staying in Vorarlberg, Austria. After the Feldkirch Regional Court had initially refused his release on bail, the Innsbruck Higher Regional Court, which was then called on, ordered his release on February 2, 2000.

The European Court of Human Rights confirmed this legal assessment and sentenced France to pay Krombach 100,000 francs in compensation. Finally, the verdict against Krombach was overturned in France in 2008.

More crimes

On March 17, 1997, Krombach was sentenced to two years probation in Kempten for the rape of a 16-year-old patient under the influence of anesthesia, committed in his practice on February 11, 1997, and lost his license to practice as a doctor. Subsequently, the doctor commented on his act in a television interview: "She did not say yes, [...] but she also did not say no [...] whoever is silent seems to agree, was said in ancient Rome." the public prosecutor's office in Coburg claimed to have received a fee totaling almost 300,000 euros in 28 cases between October 2001 and September 2006, despite the lack of authorization. In July 2007, the Coburg Regional Court sentenced him to two years and four months in prison, the last time he served in the Kempten correctional facility until he was released on June 3, 2008 early on parole.

In addition, Krombach was already a suspect in a preliminary investigation in the mid-1970s . There was suspicion that the doctor had killed his then 24-year-old first wife Monika Hentze by means of an injection in a Frankfurt hospital in 1969 after she had previously beaten her, according to her mother, and threatened to kill her. However, there was no charge.

Abduction to France

Kalinka's father André Bamberski was very dissatisfied with the progress of the proceedings and accused the judiciary of a number of failures. As a result, he went on to take further measures.

From 2007 at the latest, André Bamberski lurked repeatedly in Krombach's new family, appeared in front of their house with a camera team and distributed leaflets to their teenage daughter at the school denouncing her father as a rapist. In 2009, Kalinka's biological father finally found himself under pressure and commissioned Krombach's kidnapping to France, as the deed threatened to become statute-barred and neighbors had told him that Krombach wanted to leave for West Africa.

On the night of October 17-18, 2009, Krombach was ambushed at his house in Scheidegg , Lindau district , and kidnapped to Mulhouse , France, where he was found injured and handcuffed near the justice building. From there he was transferred to Paris for pre-trial detention. Immediately after Krombach's arrest, the Foreign Office in Berlin turned to its colleagues in Paris and requested their extradition to Germany.

Second conviction of Krombach

On March 29, 2011, the trial was due to open in Paris. However, he was suspended indefinitely because of the defendant's health problems. Doctors had previously submitted certificates that the accused was incapable of standing for at least two weeks. In April 2011, Krombach was in a Paris hospital because of a coronary artery disease.

On October 22, 2011, Dieter Krombach was sentenced in France to 15 years imprisonment for willful bodily harm resulting in death of a minor. According to the public prosecutor's office, Krombach is said to have drugged the girl with a sleeping pill in order to rape her. The appeal hearing began on November 27, 2012. The judgment was upheld on December 20, 2012.

Against this, Krombach lodged a complaint with the ECHR and complained about a violation of the prohibition of double criminal prosecution, since according to the current case law of the ECJ (judgment of February 11, 2003, Az. C-385/01), non-judicial process terminations are also considered final conclusions. The ECHR rejected the complaint (judgment of March 29, 2018 in proceedings 67521/14) because the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) does not provide for an international ban on double prosecutions, but merely prohibits multiple prosecutions in one and the same state. The different decisions were made based on independent investigations. This is not prohibited by the relevant article in an additional protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights. In the grounds of the judgment, the ECHR further stated that the law of the European Union provides for a prohibition of double criminal prosecution within all member states (Art. 50 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union and Art. 54 of the Schengen Convention ). However, it is "not the task of the Court of Justice" to assess whether the criminal judgment violates EU law, since the ECHR only has to examine possible violations of the ECHR.

Krombach remained in custody after he was convicted again. In the meantime, due to the severity of his illness, he was placed in a prison hospital. A court denied his application to move to a nursing home in October 2017. After another French court ordered his release from prison for health reasons in October 2019, Krombach was finally released on February 21, 2020.

Trial against André Bamberski

André Bamberski was arrested in France, interrogated for two days and later released. He admitted to having given his consent on October 9, 2009 to kidnap Krombach to France. In March 2015, the offense accused of Krombach in France would have been statute-barred.

An extradition request from the Kempten public prosecutor on suspicion of being deprived of liberty was rejected by the court in Toulouse.

Bamberski had to answer in court in Mulhouse (France), where he had had Krombach kidnapped. He was sentenced to a one-year suspended sentence on June 18, 2014 .

Movies

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Stefan Simons: Trial of the Kalinka case: In the name of his daughter. Spiegel Online from May 22, 2014, accessed on December 23, 2018
  2. ^ Solveig Bach: The Kalinka case: Bamberski remains a free man. n-tv from June 18, 2014, accessed on December 23, 2018
  3. ↑ Michaela Wiegel: Kalinka Trial: "He was a womanizer, intelligent and charming". dated April 1, 2011, accessed December 23, 2018
  4. ↑ a b c d e Joshua Hammer: The Kalinka Affair. The Atavist Magazine, no.13, 2012 (also available as mp3 audio files)
  5. ↑ a b c Kalinka case: stepfather fails with lawsuit. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on March 29, 2018, accessed on December 23, 2018
  6. ↑ Tanja Kuchenbecker and Albert Link: Kidnappers from the horror doctor: The avenger of Kalinka († 14) speaks. BILD from October 25, 2009, accessed on December 23, 2018
  7. ^ The regional court doctor in Kempten (Allgäu): Findings and preliminary report. (PDF; 482 kB) Autopsy report. July 12, 1982, pp. 12 and 13 , accessed October 22, 2016 .
  8. ↑ a b c The district court doctor in Kempten (Allgäu): Findings and preliminary expert opinion. (PDF; 482 kB) Autopsy report. July 12, 1982, p. 13 , accessed October 22, 2016 .
  9. ^ The regional court doctor in Kempten (Allgäu): Findings and preliminary report. (PDF; 482 kB) Autopsy report. July 12, 1982, p. 14 , accessed October 22, 2016 .
  10. ↑ a b Mischa Hauswirth: The greatest justice thriller of the post-war period. In: tagesanzeiger.ch . May 24, 2014, accessed October 20, 2016 .
  11. ^ The regional court doctor in Kempten (Allgäu): Findings and preliminary report. (PDF; 482 kB) Autopsy report. July 12, 1982, p. 3 , accessed October 22, 2016 .
  12. ^ The regional court doctor in Kempten (Allgäu): Findings and preliminary report. (PDF; 482 kB) Autopsy report. July 12, 1982, p. 10 , accessed October 22, 2016 .
  13. ↑ a b c Claudia Kornmeier: Kriminalfall Kalinka: Last act of a judicial crime story on ard.de, March 29, 2018, accessed on March 29, 2018.
  14. ↑ a b Arrêt: Renvoi devant la cour d'assises. Cour d'appel de Paris, Quatrième Chambre d'Accusation, April 8, 1993. File number 92/02556, Decision No. 15. 13 pages. Excerpt from the minutes of the office (French, digitized as PDF on sebastien.bard.pagesperso-orange.fr, accessed on August 28, 2019; there also a German translation as PDF ).
  15. ↑ 30 years through hell. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung. March 30, 2011.
  16. ↑ Pascal Grolimund: Third country problems of European civil procedure law. Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2000, ISBN 3-16-147382-5 , p. 219 ( limited preview in the Google book search)
  17. ↑ a b c Newsletter Menschenrechte 2001/2 p. 51 (NL 01/2/1): KROMBACH v. France, judgment of February 13, 2001: No legal defense in the absence of the accused.
  18. ↑ a b 61998C0007 - Opinion of Advocate General Saggio of 23 September 1999. Dieter Krombach versus André Bamberski. References for a preliminary ruling: Bundesgerichtshof - Germany. Brussels Convention - Enforcement of judgments - Public order. Case C-7/98. European Court Reports 2000 I-01935, ECLI identifier: ECLI: EU: C: 1999: 446
  19. ^ A b Maximilian Amos: ECHR confirms conviction in the criminal case "Kalinka". Legal Tribune Online March 29, 2018, accessed December 23, 2018
  20. ^ Kalinka case: stepfather kidnapped to France fails with lawsuit . In: Süddeutsche.de , March 29, 2018, accessed on March 29, 2018.
  21. ↑ Barbara Völkel: Frontal from January 20, 1998 (ZDF), accessed on January 4, 2019 ( transcript as PDF; 15 KB )
  22. ↑ An overview of the Krombach case. In: schwaebische.de . March 25, 2011, accessed on October 20, 2016 ( payment barrier ).
  23. ↑ Thomas Kirstein: The film "In the Name of My Daughter - The Kalinka Case" about the murder of girls and vigilante justice has Offenbach's history. In: op-online.de . October 20, 2016. Retrieved October 20, 2016 .
  24. ^ Isabel Meixner: Kalinka case - "The German judiciary was blind". Süddeutsche Zeitung of November 10, 2016, accessed on December 24, 2018
  25. ↑ Birgit Holzer: Unusual kidnapping: doctor was tied up and gagged in front of the judicial building - late revenge after 27 years. Wiener Zeitung of October 21, 2009, accessed on December 24, 2018
  26. ^ Andrew Anthony: Thirty Years in Search of Justice. The Guardian, October 24, 2010; accessed December 24, 2018
  27. ^ Bastien Hugues: Affaire Bamberski: le médecin allemand incarcéré. In: LeFigaro .fr. October 22, 2009, accessed October 22, 2009 (French).
  28. ↑ Dietmar Hipp, Conny Neumann: Airy tone: The Foreign Office is trying to get a doctor released who was abducted to France and imprisoned there for allegedly killing a girl. Spiegel Online, October 26, 2009. Retrieved December 26, 2018
  29. ↑ Sascha Lehnartz: For my daughter. Welt am Sonntag on March 27, 2011, accessed on December 24, 2018
  30. ↑ Because of the defendant's state of health: Paris court suspends Kalinka trial - tagesschau.de ( Memento from April 10, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
  31. ^ Dieter Krombach condamné à 15 ans de réclusion. In: Le Parisien . October 2, 2011, archived from the original on December 25, 2011 ; accessed on July 27, 2020 .
  32. ^ A b German doctor sentenced to 15 years in prison. on: welt.de . December 20, 2012, accessed December 20, 2012.
  33. ↑ Lindau doctor is on trial again ( memento from February 10, 2013 in the web archive archive.today ), Br-online.de from November 27, 2012, accessed on November 27, 2012.
  34. ↑ Decision of the ECHR on the individual complaint No. 67521/14 - Dieter KROMBACH against France in French.
  35. ↑ Stuttgarter Zeitung, Stuttgart Germany: After Kalinka's death: German imprisoned in France is free again. Retrieved February 21, 2020 .
  36. ^ Affaire Kalinka Bamberski: Dieter Krombach libéré pour raisons médicales. Accessed February 21, 2020 (French).
  37. ^ Affaire Bamberski: le Dr Krombach incarcéré, M. Bamberski libéré , Le Depeche, October 22, 2009.
  38. ↑ Kalinka case: André Bamberski is not extradited. on: faz.net , December 10, 2009.
  39. ↑ Stefan Brändle: Kalinka case: Father convicted of vigilante justice in France. In: derstandard.at. June 18, 2014, accessed June 18, 2014 .
  40. ↑ a b MEDEA FILM , Berlin, accessed on December 25, 2018
  41. ↑ Nicolas Richter: TV documentary: "The dead girl from Lake Constance" - Long search for the murderer. Süddeutsche Zeitung of March 23, 2011, accessed on December 25, 2018