Czeslaw Kukuczka was shot in the back as he tried to flee from East Germany via the Berlin Wall on March 29, 1974.

A former East German secret police officer has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for shooting dead a Polish man trying to cross the Berlin Wall into West Germany 50 years ago.

Berlin state court on Monday found ex-Stasi officer Martin Naumann, 80, guilty of murder for killing Czeslaw Kukuczka at close range as he tried to flee through Berlin’s Friedrichstrasse border point on March 29, 1974.

Judge Bernd Miczajka said in his sentencing remarks, “It was not the act of an individual for personal reasons, but planned and mercilessly executed by the Stasi.”

Miczajka added that the defendant fired the shot “at the end of a chain of command”.

Ahead of the verdict, Daniela Munkel, the head of the Stasi archives in Berlin, said the conviction would have “great symbolic significance” in the country’s efforts to atone for the Nazi regime.

However, the court did not accept the Berlin public prosecutor’s request to sentence Naumann to 12 years in prison.

The German news outlet DPA reported that Naumann’s lawyer, Andrea Liebscher, had demanded an acquittal after arguing that it had not been proven that her client fired the fatal shot.

German secret police

According to recent historical research, on the day the fatal shooting occurred, Kukuczka had gone to the Polish embassy in East Berlin and threatened to detonate a fake bomb unless he was granted passage to West Berlin.

Embassy officials approved his request whilst alerting East German authorities to the threat.

Once Stasi officials handed Kukuczka his exit visa, he was led to the “Palace of Tears” crossing, where he was shot in the back from close range.

Instead of being taken to a nearby hospital following the shot, Kukuczka was transported to a Stasi prison further away and bled to death.

According to archival documents, the secret police were under orders to “render harmless” Kukuczka, a common term in the Stasi document for the liquidation of political opponents.

Initial investigations into his death in the 1990s did not lead to a conclusion, but the case was later picked up after Poland issued a European arrest warrant for Naumann in 2021.

He was then charged with murder in October of last year.

According to official government records, 251 people were charged with crimes committed on behalf of the Stasi during the 1990s.

However, two-thirds of the criminal proceedings ended with an acquittal or without a verdict.