Border guard jailed for Berlin Wall killings

Berlin Wall: No longer part of Berlin's daily life

BERLIN (Reuters) -- A former East German border guard has been convicted of manslaughter for ordering Cold War border shootings including that of Chris Gueffroy, the last victim of the Communist shoot-to-kill policy.

Walter Schulze, 52, arrested this year on the Spanish island of Gran Canaria, received a sentence of two years and four months. Unlike those handed down to dozens of other guards in earlier cases, the term was not suspended.

The court found that Schulze, as former commander of an east Berlin regiment, had authority over some 1,000 border guards and acknowledged his admission that he had enforced a shoot-to-kill policy against would-be escapees.

Aside from the killing of 20-year-old Gueffroy, gunned down on the Berlin Wall in February 1989 just nine months before it fell in the face of popular unrest, Schulze was held responsible for the deaths of three other men.

Border guards and former East German leaders have insisted they were powerless to resist orders from Moscow to shoot at those trying to flee the communist regime.

Three former Politburo members were acquitted in a similar manslaughter trial in July after the court decided they had not been directly responsible for the policy or had been unable to prevent it from being implemented.

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