Officer Stasi killed a Pole. Years later, he goes to jail

pch24.pl 8 months ago

A Communist apparatusist who, years ago, murdered a Pole at a border crossing point heard a prison sentence. An aged German is due to service a decade, for a shot in the back of a man who demanded to pass on to the another side of the “iron curtain”.

The Berlin court sentenced erstwhile Stasi Manfred N. Officer to 10 years in prison on Monday for the execution of a Pole in 1974 at the erstwhile GDR border crossing at Friedrichstrasse Station. The D.A. applied for 12 years imprisonment for an 80-year-old man today. The conviction is not final.

According to the sentence, then Lieutenant Stasi cunningly shot 38-year-old Pole Czesław Kukuczka on March 29, 1974 on behalf of the peculiar services of the GDR.

The offence was not committed for individual reasons," said justice Bernd Mikchajka in the justification of the judgment. It was planned by Stasi, but Manfred N. “has ruthlessly accomplished it.”

The defendant's defence demanded acquittal. lawyer Andrea Liebscher stated that it was not proven that her client shot Kukuczko. The 80-year-old was silent in court about the charges; his lawyer stated at the beginning of the trial that Manfred N. denies them," wrote the weekly portal "Spiegel".

The investigation has been dead for many years. According to the Berlin D.A.'s office, it was not until 2016 that Stasi archives obtained a decisive clue about the killer's identity.

Initially, investigators assumed that there had been a murder, punishable by a punishment from 5 to 15 years in prison, and in specified a case the case would have expired. However, in 2023, the Berlin prosecutors found that in a given case the “criteria of the insidiousness of the murder” was fulfilled.

Dr. Filip Gańczak from the Institute of National Memory reminded last year in a conversation with PAP the circumstances in which Poles died.

– On the early afternoon of March 29, 1974, Czesław Kukuczka, a 38-year-old Pole, reported to the east Berlin PRL embassy, located at Unter den Linden, threatening to blow up a building if it was not allowed to enter West Berlin within hours. He claimed he had an explosive on him... that charges could be detonated in another places in East Berlin – explained.

At the time, the Polish Embassy “ informed the Ministry of State safety of the GDR. And that's where she made the decision that Czesław Kukuczko should be Dispose of. . . . . . . . . . .

– In order not to defy or carry out his threats, he was given the impression that his ultimatum would be fulfilled that he would be allowed to pass to West Berlin via Friedrichstrasse Station. – there was a border crossing between the GDR and West Berlin at that time – said Ganczak.

– And he was actually there by Stasi officers, the Ministry of State safety of the GDR, transported. He's been through a fictional border check, it seems. And erstwhile he thought he was on his best way to get on a subway train that would take him to West Berlin, he was shot in the back at close range, which proved fatal. Cuckoo died the same day at the infirmary He summarized.

Gańczak stressed that “it turned out that there were no explosives in the suitcase he was carrying”. The Pole tried to blackmail himself into escaping the force seized by the communists of the state.

(PAP)/work. FA

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