German court orders arrest of French vigilante kidnapper

AFP - A German court has ordered the arrest of an elderly Frenchman over the vigilante kidnapping of a German doctor convicted of killing his daughter 27 years ago, prosecutors said Tuesday.

The court in the southern city of Kempten has also issued a European arrest warrant for the 72-year-old Frenchman's alleged accomplice from Kosovo, aged 38, who is believed to have delivered cardiologist Dieter Krombach this month bound and gagged to a French court, the local prosecutor's office said.

"The accused are strongly suspected of capturing a 74-year-old German citizen with unknown accomplices on the night of October 17, 2009 and taking him to France," the office said in a statement.

"In order to overpower their victim, the kidnappers beat him and seriously wounded him."

Andre Bamberski, 72, was arrested last week near the German border and admitted to authorities that he had ordered Krombach, the second husband of Bamberski's ex-partner, abducted.

A French court in 1995 convicted the doctor in absentia of manslaughter over the death of 14-year-old Kalinka Bamberski, his stepdaughter, who died at his home near Lake Constance in 1982 after he gave her a mysterious injection.

Berlin had refused to hand him over on the grounds that he was tried and acquitted in Germany, but Bamberski spent two decades trying to have him sent to jail, convinced that he drugged Kalinka in order to rape her.

Krombach is in French custody and the justice system now has up to a year to organise a new trial.

The cardiologist was stripped of his licence and handed a suspended jail sentence in 1997 for sexually abusing a 16-year-old patient after injecting her with anaesthetic in his surgery.

French authorities must now decide whether to hand over Bamberski or keep him on French soil in an ongoing investigation, the prosecutor's office said in the statement. He is currently free on bail.

The suspect from Kosovo was arrested by Austrian authorities for extradition to Germany, which is still pending.

German authorities are still seeking the other alleged accomplices.