The Berlin court on Monday sentenced a former agent of the Stasi, the political police of the former communist GDR, to ten years in prison for the murder of a Pole who wanted to flee to the West, 50 years ago . After historic trial, court found 80-year-old Martin Naumann guilty of murder for shooting Czeslaw Kukuczka in the back as he tried to escape through the Friedrichstrasse border crossing in Berlin in 1974.
The court has the “undoubted conviction” that Naumann is the author of the shots which cost the life of the 38-year-old fugitive, declared the president of the court Bernd Miczajka. Even if he did not act “for personal reasons”, he “mercilessly executed” an act “planned by the Stasi”, detailed the judge. The German prosecutor’s office had requested twelve years in prison against the former lieutenant, now retired.
The person concerned rejected the accusation through his lawyers, who called for his acquittal. But he never spoke before the judges. This trial, recorded because of its historical value, is the culmination of a long investigation also carried out on the Polish side. It was only made possible by the appearance of new information found by two German and Polish historians in the Stasi archives in 2016, linking Naumann to the fugitive’s death, and the discovery of new potential witnesses.
Since its launch in March, the trial has taken the country back to the time of the Cold War, a period during which Germany was split in two by the Iron Curtain between FRG in the west and GDR in the East. According to an official in charge of the secret police archives in Berlin, Daniela Münkel, Naumann becomes with Monday’s verdict the first former secret police agent in the former communist East Germany to be convicted of murder.
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