A court in Berlin has sentenced a former Stasi officer Manfred N. to 10 years in prison for the murder of a Polish man in 1974 at the former GDR border crossing at Friedrichstrasse station. The prosecution had requested 12 years imprisonment for the now 80-year-old man. The sentence is appealable.
According to the verdict, the then-Stasi lieutenant shot the 38-year-old Pole Czesław Kukuczka on 29 March 1974 on the orders of the East German communist secret service.
The crime was not committed out of personal motives, said Judge Bernd Miczajka in his reasons for the verdict. It had been planned by the Stasi, but Manfred N. “ruthlessly carried it out”.
The defence demanded an acquittal. Lawyer Andrea Liebscher stated that it had not been proven that her client had shot Kukuczka. The 80-year-old remained silent in court but his defence lawyer stated at the beginning of the trial that Manfred N. denies it, as it was reported by the German newspaper Spiegel.
The motives and background of the murder were described by Dr Filip Gańczak of the Polish National Remembrance Institute in an interview for the Polish Press Agency:
“In the early afternoon of 29 March 1974, Czesław Kukuczka, a 38-year-old Pole, approached the communist embassy in East Berlin, located on Unter den Linden, threatening to blow up the building if he was not allowed to enter West Berlin within a few hours. He claimed that he was carrying an explosive charge (…) and that other charges could be detonated elsewhere in East Berlin,” the historian said.
The embassy of communist Poland then “informed the GDR Ministry of State Security. And there the decision was to be taken that Czesław Kukuczka should be eliminated and that he should be taken out of the embassy building beforehand”.
“So that he did not try to put up resistance or carry out his threats, he was given to understand that his ultimatum would be met, that he would be allowed to travel to West Berlin via Friedrichstrasse station – that was where the border crossing between the GDR and West Berlin was located at the time,” Dr Gańczak said.
“And indeed he was taken there by officers of the Stasi, the East German Ministry of State Security. He most probably went through a fictitious border check. And just when he thought he was on his way to board the metro train that would take him to West Berlin, he was shot in the back from close range, which proved fatal. Kukuczka died the same day in hospital,” Dr Gańczak concluded.
As the investigation showed Czesław Kukuczka had no explosives in his briefcase.
Czesław Kukucza was represented in the court by his 3 children. The case saw the first conviction of an ex-Stasi agent for murder.
Source: PAP
Photo: @MarioNawfal
Tomasz Modrzejewski
