A Berlin court Tuesday found the former head of the notorius Stasi secret police, feared in former communist East Germany for its terror tactics, guilty of a 1931 double-murder and sentenced him to six years in prison.
Erich Mielke stood impassively, supported by a cane, as Judge Theodor Seidel read the court's guilty verdict to the boos and jeers of communist supporters sitting in the public gallery.Mielke, 85, who ran the feared East German Stasi for more than 30 years, was found guilty of shooting two police officers in 1931 during his days as a communist street fighter in Berlin during the final chaotic years of the ill-fated Weimar Republic.
Mielke denied taking part in the 1931 shootings.