When the trial began, the forty-lawyer prosecution team, which represented Klaus Barbie's myriad victims, opened its argument by reciting a list of Barbie's crimes. The list turned out to be so long that the entire first day of the trial was devoted to its reading. Moreover, the prosecution had scores of witnesses, mainly those who had been tortured by Barbie because he suspected that they were members of the French Resistance or because they were Jewish.