Kalinka Bamberski case information

The Kalinka Bamberski case has spanned 30 years and has caused considerable publicity because of the issues of French-German relations and vigilante justice it raised. Kalinka Bamberski, a French teenager, died in 1982 in the house of her German stepfather, Dieter Krombach, a serial rapist and former physician. Suspicious autopsy results caused the girl's French father André Bamberski to pressure German authorities into investigating Krombach's involvement in the death.

When Germany closed the case and denied extradition to France, Krombach was tried in absentia in France and convicted of involuntary manslaughter in 1995, a verdict later overturned by the European Court of Human Rights on procedural grounds. In 2009, Bamberski had Krombach abducted in Germany and driven to France. Krombach stood trial there, was convicted in 2011 of having caused intentional bodily harm resulting in unintentional death, and was sentenced to 15 years in prison. The European Court of Human Rights upheld the verdict on appeal in 2018. A French court gave Bamberski a one-year suspended sentence for the abduction.