4 East Germans Arrested Over Killings at Wall

A former East German defense minister was arrested after police were tipped that he planned to flee the country to avoid charges of inciting guards to kill people trying to escape across the Berlin Wall, an official said Tuesday.

Police also arrested Willi Stoph, 76, the former East German prime minister, and two other top Communist officials late Monday and early Tuesday on charges that they were responsible for the shoot-to-kill orders given border guards.

An official reported that police set up roadblocks around a Soviet military base to prevent the escape of Heinz Kessler, 71, the former defense chief. He did not turn up but was arrested elsewhere.

The ailing Erich Honecker, the former Communist Party chief of East Germany, was spirited away to Moscow by the Soviet military March 13. He also is wanted by Berlin justice officials in connection with the deaths of would-be escapees before the Communist regime collapsed in 1989.

Up to 200 people were killed trying to escape across East Germany’s fortified border or the Berlin Wall from 1961 to 1989, when the border was opened after a peaceful citizens’ revolt in the east.

Berlin Justice Minister Jutta Limbach said Stoph and Kessler were arrested along with two other members of the once-powerful East German National Defense Council, Fritz Streletz, 64, and Hans Albrecht, 72.

The four had been under investigation for months on suspicion of manslaughter in connection with a shoot-to-kill order issued in 1974 by Honecker, Limbach’s statement said.

Kessler’s lawyer, Winfried Matthaeus, was quoted by the ADN news agency as saying it was “completely absurd” to claim that Kessler planned to flee. Matthaeus said Kessler had been invited to visit the Soviet Defense Ministry with his wife, Ruth, and planned to fly to Moscow today, ADN reported.

Kessler and Stoph are among the best-known members of the Honecker regime.

Stoph served as East Germany’s prime minister from 1964 until 1973. He was again named to that post after the 1976 elections.

Kessler served as defense minister from 1985 until the fall of East Germany’s hard-line Communist government in the autumn of 1989, when Stoph was also ousted.