German justice delivers a long-awaited judgment on Monday against a former agent of the Stasi, the political police of the communist GDR, which has now disappeared. (Illustrative photo)
AFP
German justice delivers a long-awaited judgment on Monday against a former agent of the Stasi, the political police of the communist GDR, now defunct, accused of the murder of a Pole who wanted to flee to the west 50 years ago.
If Martin Naumann, 80, is convicted, it will be the first murder conviction of a Stasi officer, 35 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
This trial, recorded because of its historical value, has taken the country back to the time of the Cold War since its launch in March, a period during which Germany was split in two by the Iron Curtain between FRG in the west and GDR to the East.
It is the culmination of decades of laborious investigation, sometimes abandoned then reopened, also on the Polish side.
The German prosecutor’s office requested 12 years in prison against the former lieutenant, now retired. He is accused of having shot the 38-year-old Pole in the back at the border post at Friedrichstrasse station, a crossing point until the end of 1989 between the west of Berlin and the communist east.
The person concerned rejected the accusation through his lawyers. But he never spoke before the judges.
fake bomb
Even if Attorney General Henrike Hillmann admitted that he had carried out an order, the accused, 31 years old at the time, clearly acted with the intention to kill when he could have injured the fugitive.
And he took advantage of the vulnerable state of his victim who believed himself to be safe at that moment, which in his eyes justifies his indictment for “murder”, a charge not subject to the statute of limitations.
Czeslaw Kukuczka, who dreamed of a life in the “free world”, is one of at least 140 people who died between 1961 and 1989 trying to cross the wall.
On March 29, 1974, he burst into the Polish embassy in the former East Berlin with a fake bomb to force his departure to the West.
Alerted by Poland, the German secret police then made him believe that his release had been accepted. But just when the man thinks he has successfully passed two checkpoints, Officer Naumann shoots him dead, an act that later earned him a decoration.
Employee of a construction company, Czeslaw Kukuczka had three children who joined as civil parties but did not attend the trial.
His daughter’s lawyer, Hans-Jürgen Förster, who considers the accused as “the last link in a chain of command”, filed a request for the investigation to be extended to all people decorated by the regime for the death of Mr. Kukuczka.
Defense lawyer Andrea Liebscher disputes that her client was the shooter.
Great meaning
If Mr. Naumann is convicted, he will be the first former Stasi agent to be convicted of murder, Daniela Münkel, an official in charge of the secret police archives in Berlin, told AFP.
This would have “great symbolic significance” in Germany’s efforts to make pay for the injustices of the communist dictatorship of the GDR, judged the historian.
On the contrary, his acquittal would probably definitively close the chapter on their legal treatment, according to her.
During the 1990s, a total of 251 people were charged with crimes committed on behalf of the Stasi, according to government records.
Two thirds of them, including many perpetrators such as border guards, were acquitted or the charges against them dropped. Only 87 were sentenced, most to light sentences.
Even Erich Mielke was not convicted for his activities as head of the Stasi from 1957 to 1989, due to lack of sufficient charges. However, he was sentenced to six years in prison on October 26, 1993 for the murder of two police officers in 1931 when he was a young communist activist.
(afp)
