A former East German secret police officer has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for murdering a Polish man attempting to flee to West Berlin 50 years ago.
The man, named as Martin Manfred N in court papers, is now 80. He shot Czeslaw Kukuczka in the back at Friedrichstrasse station in 1974, after he had entered the Polish embassy claiming to be carrying a bomb and demanding to be allowed to leave to democratic West Germany.
Details of the killing remained unknown for decades after the Stasi secret police shredded files relating to the case before communist East Germany reunified with the West in 1991.
Berlin prosecutors filed charges against him in 2023 after persistent investigations by historians and Polish authorities.
Advertisement
On 29 March 1974, 38-year-old Kukuczka, a firefighter, entered the Polish embassy on East Berlin’s Unter den Linden boulevard with a briefcase.
The father of three said – falsely – that he was carrying a bomb. He demanded to be allowed…