Frank Berton | |
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 Berton at a press conference in 2008 | |
| Born | June 4, 1962 Amiens, France |
| Nationality | French |
| Alma mater | Lille 2 University of Health and Law (JD) |
| Occupation | Lawyer |
| Spouse | Bérangère Lecaille |
| Children | Thomas, Martin, Eliot, and Adèle |
| Website | www |
Frank Berton (born June 4, 1962) is a French attorney best known for his work with L'affaire d'Outreau (the Outreau trial) and the November 2015 Paris attacks. He specializes in Penal Law and Press Rights law. [1]
Frank Berton was born in 1962 in Amiens, France. Berton had a challenging childhood due to having a father who was violent towards him. Berton's father pressured him into going to business school. [2] However, Berton had always known he wanted to be a lawyer and pursued his ambitions. During 1989, Berton was admitted into Lille 2 University of Health and Law. Berton has been on many highly publicized cases throughout his career and has gathered a strong reputation for himself. Berton has been hailed, "défense des français à l'étranger" or defender of French citizens abroad. Berton has a family consisting of four kids and a wife. His wife Bérangère Lecaille is also a French lawyer.
He became an "ambassador" for Prison Insider, an information platform on conditions of detention around the world, in 2024. [3]
The Outreau trial was a 2004 court trial in France that ended with the imprisonment of 18 people. However, in the following trials and appeals, it was found out that one of the imprisoned had committed perjury and this led to the false imprisonment of 14 people (one passed away in jail). [4] Frank Berton was the lawyer for Odile Marécaux during the trial and successful appeal. [5] This case had international attention and was included in newspapers like, The New York Times . [6] There have also been documentaries made about this judicial mishap, one of these documentaries is called "Outreau, Autopsie d'un Désastre" directed by Jacques Renard.
The Affaire Cottrez was a large scandal where a French woman, Dominique Cottrez, was accused of committing the crime of infanticide. Cottrez was sentenced to 9 years in prison after being found guilty of killing 8 kids, 6 of which were found in her garage. [7] Cottrez claimed that the children were born as a result of incest without her consent by her own father, which is why she ended their lives. [8] Frank Berton along with Marie-Hélène Carlier were Cottrez's lawyers. [9] In 2018, after serving part of her sentence, it was decided she was no longer a risk and she was free to be released. [10]
Salah Abdeslam is suspected of being the only surviving terrorist that facilitated the November 2015 Paris attacks. Frank Berton was one of the lawyers that represented Salah Abdeslam. [11] This was a highly publicized case due to the fact that 130 French people were killed in over 6 coordinated incidents. Berton made many public appearances during the trials and even invited to interviews with news sources like, France Info. [12] This case is increasingly notable for Berton because in the face of incredible hatred and blame from the public towards Salah Abdeslam, he stood firm in his opinion that until a person is found guilty, he still deserves the right of a defense. [11] Salah was found guilty and sentenced to 20 years of prison time at the end of court proceedings. [13] Salah Abdeslam was held in custody with 24/7 surveillance, and this led to his refusal to talk to anyone, including his lawyers, in protest. This caused both Berton and his other lawyers to stop representing him. [14]
On the 20th of March, 2013, four French citizens were arrested in Punta Cana International Airport in the Dominican Republic. The police seized around 700 kg (1543 lbs) of Cocaine from their airplane. [15] The scandal was named Affaire Air Cocaïne, or Air Cocaine Scandal by the media. Frank Berton and Philippe Screve were the defendants' lawyers. [16] The trial ended with the four French citizens being sentenced to 20 years of prison time. [17] However, the two pilots were acquitted on 8 July 2021 following an appeal. [18]
Frank Berton has an autobiography about his life and career that is set to come out in 2019. The book was written in collaboration with Elsa Vigoureux and the L'Obs . Berton has given some insight into the contents and has revealed that his work on high profile cases, like with Salah Abdeslam, will be detailed. [19]
The Outreau case refers to a criminal case of pedophilia which took place between 1997 and 2000 in Outreau in northern France and a partial judicial error which led to provisional detentions between 2001 and 2004. Following alerts launched by social services within the Delay family, a long investigation seemed to reveal an extensive pedophile network: around forty adults had been accused and around fifty children were potentially victims.
Fleury-Mérogis Prison is a prison in France, located in the town of Fleury-Mérogis, in the southern suburbs of Paris. With more than 4,100 prisoners, it is the largest prison in Europe. It is operated by the Ministry of Justice.
Dominique Cottrez is a French woman who admitted to killing 8 of her newborn infants.
Matthew Parish is a British international lawyer and scholar of international relations, based in England and Eastern Europe. In September 2021, Parish was sentenced by a Swiss court to three years in prison for his role staging a fraudulent arbitration to prove the authenticity of incriminating evidence in a political dispute between rival members of the Kuwaiti ruling family.
Salah Hamouri is a French-Palestinian lawyer and field researcher for the Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association. His wife – who is French – has been barred since January 2016 from entering Israel or the Israeli-occupied West Bank to visit him.
The couscous connection was an international drug trafficking gang based in Paris in the 1980s. The gang imported heroin and cocaine from Tunisia via Amsterdam and Brussels to Paris, where they distributed the drugs. The trial of the gang members in 1992 received widespread publicity since the younger brother of the president of Tunisia was charged and convicted in absentia for his involvement in laundering the proceeds.
Salah Abdeslam is a Belgian-born Islamic terrorist who was sentenced to life in prison in France in 2022 as the only surviving member of the 10-man unit that carried out the attacks in Paris on 13 November 2015, in which 130 people were killed and more than 490 injured.
Abdelhamid Abaaoud was a Belgian-born Islamic terrorist who had spent time in Syria. He was suspected of having organized multiple terror attacks in Belgium and France, and is known to have masterminded the November 2015 Paris attacks. Prior to the Paris attacks, there was an international arrest warrant issued for Abaaoud for his activities in recruiting individuals to Islamic terrorism in Syria.
Mohamed Abrini is a Belgian Islamic terrorist. On 29 June 2022 he was convicted of involvement in the November 2015 Paris attacks and received a sentence of life imprisonment with a minimum term of 22 years. In July 2023 he was convicted of terrorist-related murder and attempted murder for his role in the 2016 Brussels bombings, and given a sentence of 30 years.
On 15 and 18 March 2016, Belgian police carried out raids on houses in Brussels. The raids were conducted in connection to the attacks in Paris four months earlier. In the raids, one suspect was killed and five others were arrested, including Salah Abdeslam, the only surviving member of the 10-man unit that carried out the November 2015 Paris attacks.
On 22 March 2016, two coordinated terrorist attacks in and close to Brussels, Belgium, were carried out by the Islamic State (IS). Two suicide bombers detonated bombs at Brussels Airport in Zaventem just outside Brussels, and one detonated a bomb on a train leaving Maelbeek/Maalbeek metro station in the European Quarter of Brussels. Thirty-two people were killed and more than 300 were injured. Three perpetrators also died. A third airport attacker fled the scene without detonating his bomb, which was later found in a search of the airport. A second metro attacker also fled, taking his bomb with him. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attacks.
Najm al-'Ashrāwī, also known as Abū Idrīs al-Baljīkī or Soufiane Kayal, was a Belgian-Moroccan terrorist and Islamic State militant who was one of two suicide bombers at Brussels Airport in the 2016 Brussels bombings. The Islamic State confirmed that he was responsible for making all the explosives used in the November 2015 Paris attacks.
Osama Krayem, also known as Naïm or Naim al Hamed, is a Swedish-Syrian convicted terrorist and mass murderer involved in the 2016 Brussels bombings. He was one of five men arrested on 8 April 2016 by the Belgian police.
The Brussels Islamic State terror cell was a group involved in large-scale terrorist attacks in Paris in November 2015 and Brussels in March 2016. The terror cell was connected to the Islamic State (IS), a jihadist terrorist organisation primarily based in Syria and Iraq.
On 23 March 2018, an Islamic terrorist carried out three attacks in the town of Carcassonne and nearby village of Trèbes in the Aude department in southwestern France, killing three people and injuring fifteen.
Assa Traoré is a French-Malian anti-racism activist and leader of the Truth and Justice for Adama Committee, named after her half-brother, Adama Traoré, who died in police custody, the circumstances of his death having been disputed. An autopsy raised in court indicated he may have suffered asphyxiation after his arrest, which was admitted by one of the Gendarmes who held him. Since Adama's death she has attempted to challenge the institutions of France, rallying activists from black neighbourhoods and engaging medical experts to try to get to the bottom of his death. On July 18, 2020, in the wake of the George Floyd protests, she participated in the "Marche pour Adama", and called for the prosecution of the gendarmerie regarding her brother's death.
Thierry Lévy was a high-profile French criminal defence lawyer who spent his career in a state of permanent opposition to the French legal establishment. Admitted to the Paris bar in 1969, he went on to appear in a succession of well publicised criminal trials during the ensuing three and a half decades. His father had been a journalist and press proprietor who was not infrequently supportive of nationalist and other right-wing movements. Thierry Lévy's own assessments of the French criminal justice system, which he shared frequently through the print media and, especially during his later years, in television debates, placed him firmly at the liberal-left end of the political spectrum, however. He was a prominent and eloquent backer of the campaign that led to the abolition of the death penalty by Justice Minister Robert Badinter under President Mitterrand in 1981.
The Paris attacks trial was the trial in Paris, France, of twenty men accused of involvement in the Paris terrorist attacks of 13 November 2015, which killed 130 people and injured hundreds. The ten-month trial was the longest criminal trial in French history and took place in a specially built courtroom inside the Palais de Justice before five judges presided over by Jean-Louis Périès. The court sat for 148 days between 8 September 2021 and 27 June 2022. Verdicts were delivered on 29 June 2022. Nineteen of the twenty defendants were found guilty of all charges and sentenced to prison terms ranging from four years to full-life. One defendant was found guilty of fraud but not terrorist involvement and sentenced to two years imprisonment. In France the trial is also known as V13 as the attacks took place on Friday the 13th.
Sven Mary is a Belgian lawyer, best known for representing notorious criminals such as Salah Abdeslam and for defending Eva Kaili, Greek Member of the European Parliament, against charges of corruption as part of the Qatar corruption scandal at the European Parliament.
The Outreau Case: A French Nightmare is a Netflix original documentary series on the Outreau case, a criminal case of pedophilia which took place between 1997 and 2000 in Outreau in northern France. The series features the child abuse allegations that led to a judicial disaster, revisiting the complex and controversial Outreau case.
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