Germany's highest court Tuesday upheld the prosecution of former East German leaders for the killing of freedom-seekers who tried to flee over the Berlin Wall and across the deadly barriers that once divided this country.
The Constitutional Court ruled that the killing of more than 500 people along the former communist state's border during the 41-year existence of East Germany violated international standards for human rights.The Communists erected watchtowers, electrified barbed-wire fences and high walls along the border between East Germany and the West, creating "death strips" that were patrolled by guards with machine guns and attack dogs.
The decision is a significant victory for united Germany's efforts to punish those responsible for "shoot-to-kill" orders that resulted in the deaths.
The court upheld the 1993 convictions of former East German Defense Minister Heinz Kessler; his top aide, Fritz Streletz; and Communist Party boss Hans Al-brecht.
The three, all members of the National Defense Council that oversaw border patrols, unsuccessfully argued that their trial was illegal because they had only carried out the law of a sovereign state: East Germany.
Survivors of the victims welcomed the decision.
Marlit Schubert watched her husband, Helmut Kleinert, gunned down as they tried to run across a field on the border with West Germany in 1963.
"The court's ruling is a victory for all of us (families of the victims)," she said by telephone from her home in Hanover.
Kleinert was 24 when he died. Marlit was 22 and pregnant.Thirty-three years have passed and she has remarried, but Schubert said she still visits the site in the Harz Mountains where her first husband died.
"What I went through is something you never forget," she said, adding that no one has been brought to trial for Kleinert's death.
Kessler, Streletz and Albrecht are among about three dozen former Communist officials and border guards who have been convicted for border shootings since Germany's 1990 reunification.
The three were convicted on charges stemming from seven border deaths and were given prison sentences of up to 71/2 years.