In February 1989, four East German border guards were awarded medals, bonuses and extra holidays for shooting dead a young man as he tried to flee over the Berlin Wall to the West.
On Monday, the four go on trial for manslaughter in the first court case dealing with deaths at the former inter-German border since the two German states united in October.The trial's outcome may settle an urgent legal issue: Can border sentries who gunned down would-be defectors under an East German "shoot-to-kill" decree be prosecuted retroactively under the Western criminal code now in place?
More than 160 investigations are under way in connection with the 200 known deaths at East Germany's fortified frontier with West Germany between 1961 and the fall of the hard-line communist government in a popular uprising in November 1989.
"This is an extraordinarily complicated legal issue," said Johannes Eisenberg, lawyer for an ex-sentry facing trial.
" `Escape from the Republic' was an offense in the criminal code of East Germany that had to be countered by force of arms if necessary," he said. "My client had no choice (but to shoot). He is not criminally culpable."
On the cold evening of Feb. 5, 1989, Chris Gueffroy, a 20-year-old waiter, and his friend, Christian Gaudian, set out to breach the Berlin Wall, the strip of concrete barriers, watchtowers and booby traps that symbolized the Cold War.
They crawled over the ground in the shadows between floodlights before reaching the outer concrete wall facing West Berlin, then a Western enclave surrounded by East Germany. Their luck ended there.
A siren went off just before midnight and members of the elite border troops came running.
Gueffroy and Gaudian sank to the ground in a hail of gunfire. Gaudian survived serious leg wounds and will be a key prosecution witness at the trial.
In published interviews after unification, the ex-sentries said they were given extra leave, medals for distinguished service to the "first workers' and peasants' state on German soil," and a $85 bonus.
Earlier this year, the Berlin state justice department task force in charge of prosecuting official crime in old East Germany charged the four guards with being accomplices to manslaughter.
If convicted, they face a minimum sentence of five years in prison.
Eisenberg conceded the guards could have shot over the defectors' heads or at their feet to stop them. "But from a distance, and at the end of a long shift, with frozen fingers on the trigger, the guards were hopelessly overwhelmed by the situation. How could they guarantee that one of their shots would not be (fatal)?"
Karin Gueffroy, mother of the dead waiter, said: "I really think they had the (moral) choice to disobey the shoot-to-kill decree or at least fire wide of the (two young men)."
Ex-Communist officials and border officers disagree. There was no room, they say, for free will in a force disciplined to maintain state security at all cost.