Born at Saint-Étienne, Loire, Boudarel studied at a Marist seminary before becoming a history professor at the Saigon Lycée Marie-Curie in the late 1940s and during the First Indochina War.
[1] Numerous testimonies of survivors of the camp later accused Boudarel of torturing French Army prisoners "with perverse cruelty, he applied to his countrymen the method of degradation by hunger, physical decline, political indoctrination and denunciation among inmates".
On 13 February 1991, during a conference organised at the French Senate by the Centre des hautes études sur l’Afrique et l’Asie modernes, he was recognised by Jean-Jacques Beucler, a former secretary of State for veterans, who had been a prisoner at Camp 113.
A recourse made on 25 February 2000 at the European Court of Human Rights against France, complaining about the decision by the French Cour de Cassation and alleged violations of freedom of speech, was similarly turned down in March 2003.
The ensuing controversy led to a proposal to amend article 213-5 of the French penal code so as to make crimes against humanity ineligible for amnesty.