Catching Up With Killers
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An 80-year-old former East German Secret Police (Stasi) officer was sentenced to 10 years in prison Monday for killing a Polish man trying to escape to West Germany 50 years ago, the Washington Post reported.
The Berlin court, in a landmark ruling, found the former Stasi officer, Martin Naumann, guilty of shooting 38-year-old Czeslaw Kukuczka to death at close range as he tried to flee to West Berlin via the Friedrichstraße border crossing, better known as Checkpoint Charlie, according to France24.
It is the first time a former Stasi officer has been found guilty of murder. Presiding judge Bernd Miczajka said in his verdict that while Naumann “did not commit the crime for personal reasons, (he) executed it mercilessly.”
Suspects in killings by the former state of East Germany, or the DDR, have historically faced manslaughter charges instead of murder on the grounds that these officers were following orders and not acting with “malice.” Prosecutors, however, said that wasn’t the case in the Kukuzcka killing.
The shooting occurred after Kukuczka had threatened to detonate a bomb at the Polish embassy in East Berlin if he wasn’t allowed to cross into West Germany. Kukuczka, a father of two, wanted to start a new life in Florida.
The Pole thought he had secured his exit when he was shot by Naumann. Several young girls on a school field trip to East Berlin who were returning back to the West witnessed the killing.
Meanwhile, Stasi records show that Kukuczka had been bluffing about the bomb.
After he was shot, later dying in a Stasi prison clinic, Kukuzcka’s family was sent an urn of his cremated remains – but they never learned the truth about his death, reported the Guardian.
The details of the case were only unearthed years later by historian Stefan Appelius when he found documents detailing the shooting and the subsequent actions to cover it up in Stasi archives.
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