Ex-Stasi officer faces  trial over 1974 killing at Berlin Wall

The man, a former Stasi lieutenant who is now 80 years old, stands accused by prosecutors of having killed 38-year-old Czesław Kukuczka “with a targeted shot to the back from a hiding place” as he crossed the border to West Berlin, according to the indictment.

Stasi officials had allegedly granted Kukuczka permission to leave the country and even accompanied him to the border crossing at the railway station.

However, as he passed the last checkpoint there in the early afternoon of March 29, he was killed by the fatal shot.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, courts in Berlin prosecuted a number of former East German soldiers, police and high-ranking officials for killing people trying to escape the country. A total of 130 people were convicted.

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But Thursday’s case will be the first prosecution in two decades, and the first time that an East German official has been accused of murder – instead of a lesser charge – for a death at the former border, according to historian Gerhard Sälter.

The investigation into Kukuczka’s death picked up in 2016 after files in the Stasi archives revealed the identity of the suspected shooter, according to Sebastian Büchner, a spokesman for the public prosecutor’s office in Berlin.

A lawyer for the victim’s family, Hans-Jürgen Förster, said he pressed authorities to bring murder charges in the case, citing an order signed by then-Stasi boss Erich Mielke.

The defendant has not commented publicly on the allegations against him. Proceedings in the case are scheduled to continue through May 23.