German court finds former Stasi officer guilty of murder

BERLIN — A Berlin court on Monday found a former officer of the East German secret police guilty of murder in what is the first verdict of its kind.

The court sentenced the former member of East Germany’s secret police, or Stasi, to 10 years in prison for the 1974 shooting of the then-38-year-old Czesław Kukuczka, a Polish citizen who was attempting to cross into West Berlin at the Friedrichstrasse border crossing.

The former Stasi agent, an 80-year-old identified by the court as Martin N., was found to have shot Kukuczka in the back as he attempted to pass through a final checkpoint.

“Although the accused had acted at the behest of his superiors, his actions were not justified either under federal German law or under the law applicable in East Germany at the time,” the leading judge said in court.

“Rather, the accused was concerned with fulfilling the state doctrine of East Germany, namely, to prevent the departure of citizens of East Germany and its so-called brother states at all costs,” the judge added.

The ruling marks the first time a former Stasi agent has been found guilty of murder since the fall of the Berlin Wall. The verdict, however, is not expected to usher in a wave of similar cases involving Stasi wrongs, said Michael Kubiciel, a professor of criminal law from the University of Augsburg.

“I suspect the investigations in other cases to have been completed already, therefore I don’t expect new proceedings to emanate from this judgment.”

More than 100,000 East Germans attempted to escape to West Germany between 1961 and 1988. More than 600 of them died in the process, often shot dead by East German border guards.

A few weeks after Martin N. shot Kukuczka, the East German state honored him for “rendering harmless” the victim.

Documents that surfaced in Stasi archives were essential to leading to the verdict, the court said in a statement.

The victim had previously tried to force his way out of East Germany by bringing a fake bomb to the Polish Embassy in East Berlin. He was later handed exit papers and driven to the border crossing, but never made it to the other side.