On Monday, October 14, German justice sentenced a former agent of the Stasi, the political police of the German Democratic Republic (GDR, communist), to ten years in prison for the murder of a Pole who wanted to flee to the west. fifty years later. back.
The Berlin court “undoubted conviction” that Martin Naumann, 80, shot and killed Czeslaw Kukuczka, 38, as he tried to escape through the Friedrichstrasse border crossing in Berlin in 1974, presiding judge Bernd Miczajka said of the court.
Even if the shooter, who was 31 years old at the time of the events, did not act “for personal reasons”he has “executed without mercy” an act “planned by the Stasi”the formidable secret police of East Germany during the Cold War, the judge detailed. The German prosecutor’s office had requested twelve years in prison against the former lieutenant, now retired.
The interested party rejected the accusation through his lawyers, who requested his acquittal, considering the evidence that he was the author of the shot insufficient. Mr. Naumann never spoke before the judges.
Historical value
According to the head of the Berlin secret police archives, Daniela Münkel, with Monday’s sentence he becomes the first former secret police agent of the former East Germany convicted of murder.
This trial, recorded for its historical value, has since its launch in March transported the country to the era of the Cold War, a period during which Germany was divided in two by the Iron Curtain between the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) , to the west, and GDR, to the east. It is the culmination of decades of painstaking research, sometimes abandoned and then reopened, also on the Polish side.
It was only made possible by the emergence of new information found by two German and Polish historians in Stasi archives in 2016, linking Mr Naumann to the fugitive’s death, and the discovery of new potential witnesses.
Czeslaw Kukuczka, who dreamed of a life in the “free world”He is one of at least 140 people who died between 1961 and 1989 trying to cross the Berlin Wall. On March 29, 1974, he stormed the Polish embassy in the former East Berlin with a fake bomb to force his departure for the West.
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Alerted by Poland, the German secret police made him believe that his release had been accepted. But just when the man thought he had managed to escape after passing two checkpoints without incident, Officer Naumann shot him dead, an act that later earned him a decoration.
“The last link in a chain of command”
Czeslaw Kukuczka, an employee of a construction company, had three children, who joined as civil parties but did not attend the trial. His daughter’s lawyer, Hans-Jürgen Förster, believes that the accused is “the last link in a chain of command”submitted a request for the investigation to be expanded to all persons decorated by the regime for the death of Mr. Kukuczka.
During the 1990s, a total of 251 people were charged with crimes committed in the name of the Stasi, according to government records. Two-thirds of them, including many perpetrators such as border guards, were acquitted or proceedings against them were dismissed, most often for lack of evidence or testimony.
Only 87 were sentenced, most to light sentences. Not even Erich Mielke himself could be convicted for his activities at the head of the Stasi between 1957 and 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.
