A former East German secret police officer has been sentenced to ten years in jail for murdering a Polish guy making an attempt to escape to West Berlin 50 years in the past.The person, named as Martin Manfred N in court docket papers, is now 80. He shot Czeslaw Kukuczka within the again at Friedrichstrasse station in 1974, after he had entered the Polish embassy claiming to be wearing a bomb and significant to be allowed to depart to democratic West Germany. Main points of the killing remained unknown for many years after the Stasi secret police shredded recordsdata in terms of the case ahead of communist East Germany reunified with the West in 1991. Berlin prosecutors filed fees towards him in 2023 after power investigations through historians and Polish government. On 29 March 1974, 38-year-old Kukuczka, a firefighter, entered the Polish embassy on East Berlin’s Unter den Linden street with a briefcase. The daddy of 3 mentioned – falsely – that he used to be wearing a bomb. He demanded to be allowed to depart for West Berlin. Stasi officials gave him an go out visa and a few West German cash and escorted him to Friedrichstrasse station, which used to be nonetheless served through trains from the western aspect of the town. Kukuczka handed a number of border tests throughout the station. Then again, ahead of he may just make it to the western a part of the station, a person approached him from at the back of and shot him within the again. A bunch of schoolchildren from Hesse in West Germany have been amongst witnesses to the killing. One gave proof on the trial that she had observed a person shoot Kukuczka ahead of “other folks in uniform” sealed off the passage. Main points of the case have been exposed through historians, who tracked down similar recordsdata within the Stasi archives. Paperwork linking Naumann to the killing, which were shredded, have been reconstituted the usage of a purpose-built system.Kukuczka’s circle of relatives used to be by no means formally informed of his destiny. His ashes have been despatched to his spouse some weeks after his homicide. The case used to be delivered to trial after Poland issued a Ecu arrest warrant for Naumann in 2021.The trial has been observed as preserving particular historic importance in Germany, in a similar way to trials of surviving Holocaust perpetrators. Martin Manfred N all the time insisted on his innocence. His legal professional has mentioned there used to be no evidence he performed the killing. East Germany used to be made from the portions of Germany occupied through the Soviet Union after the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945. It used to be a communist dictatorship, whilst West Germany – made from the American, British and French career zones – used to be a capitalist, democratic state. In 1991, each international locations reunified to shape trendy Germany.
