Ex-East German Secret Police Chief Convicted : Europe: He is given six years for killing two policemen 62 years ago. Charges stemming from his role in Stasi are pending.

Erich Mielke, who for years orchestrated Communist Europe’s most pervasive secret police system, was convicted of murder and sentenced to six years in prison by a Berlin court Tuesday. But the crimes had nothing to do with his role as head of East Germany’s infamous Stasi.

At the end of a controversial trial that consumed the better part of two years, Mielke was found guilty of killing two Berlin police officers during a street brawl more than 62 years ago, in the twilight of the tumultuous Weimar era.

In reading the verdict, presiding Judge Theodor Seidel explained that although Mielke was found guilty, the unusual passage of time meant a relatively light sentence.

But unlike several other, lesser members of the Communist East German hierarchy tried here since unification, Mielke did not have his sentence suspended.

“He will serve his time because there is a risk he could flee the country,” said court spokesman Bruno Rautenberg.

In reading the verdict, Seidel noted Mielke’s role as chief of East Germany’s Ministry for State Security, known as the Stasi, which he called “one of the most feared arms of repression in the 20th Century.”

Mielke, now 85 and in failing health, displayed little emotion as the verdict was read. At one point, he waved briefly to acknowledge a group of hard-core followers of the former regime sitting in the packed public gallery who briefly interrupted the proceedings by hissing and shouting “Scandal” and “Fascism.”

One of Mielke’s lawyers, Hubert Dreyling, used words like absurd, questionable and sinful to denounce the judgment and said the ruling will be appealed.

Politicians from the country’s governing parties, however, welcomed the verdict.

Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger called the verdict important but stressed that it remains important to bring former Communist officials to trial “above all, for crimes committed under the (Communist) tyranny.”

A hearing is scheduled next month to determine if Mielke is medically fit to face other charges pending against him that stem from his position as Stasi chief.

His trial was controversial not just because it centered on crimes committed more than six decades earlier for which there were no living witnesses. Disputes also bubbled about admitting evidence gathered during the Nazi era, when the charge against Mielke was first made.

“That statements from the Nazi era carry any value at all is in my eyes a deadly sin,” Dreyling said.

For others, however, the very idea of trying Mielke for a crime that took place so long ago effectively devalued his subsequent role as head of an organization that destroyed countless lives, terrorized hundreds of thousands and cast its shadow over 17 million.

Tuesday’s verdict marked the latest twist in Germany’s troubled, often bizarre, attempts to punish the leaders of the regime in the former Communist east.

Last month, an attempt to fix responsibility for the deaths of hundreds of East Germans who died during the Cold War trying to flee to the West ended largely in failure. The trial fizzled to a close with suspended sentences given to three relative unknowns in the East German hierarchy.

Petra Falkenberg of The Times’ Berlin Bureau contributed to this report.