Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.twt.news From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: Honecker trial is criticized from all sides Date: Thu, 12 Nov 92 14:51:51 EST Message-ID: \SE A;WORLD \HD Honecker trial is criticized from all sides \BY Joseph Fleming \CR THE WASHINGTON TIMES \DT BONN BONN - The trial of former East German leader Erich Honecker, scheduled to open today, has sparked widespread criticism from mainstream commentators who fear it will degenerate into a spectacle of public vengeance. "Under cover of the rule of law, an 80-year-old man with incurable liver cancer will be wheeled into court week after week to atone for the guilt in which the majority of Germans who today are over 70 years old are morally involved," wrote Rudolf Augstein, publisher of the weekly news magazine Der Spiegel. Legal expert Friedrich Dencker of the University of Muenster said it was legal under East German law to shoot refugees. The Koelnische Rundschan newspaper in Cologne called it "a show trial designed to put the defendant on public display." "Such a spectacle must be prevented if justice in general does not want to lose its credibility," it said. Mr. Honecker is charged with responsibility for the deaths of 50 refugees who were shot and killed while trying to flee communist East Germany. The prosecution's case against Mr. Honecker appears to be based mainly on an order issued by the National Defense Council of East Germany on May 3, 1974. Mr. Honecker chaired the commission. The order reads, "As before, there must be ruthless use of firearms [in] all attempts to breach the border, and the comrades who successfully use their firearms are to be commended." Charged with Mr. Honecker were former Defense Minister Gen. Heinz Kessler, 72; his former deputy, Gen. Fritz Strelitz, 66; and Erich Mielke, 84, former minister of state security and head of the Stasi, the secret police. Critics of the trial contend that if Mr. Honecker were an ordinary person, his health alone would rule out a trial. No one disputes, they say, that he is critically ill. Dr. Volkmar Schneider, whom authorities ordered to examine Mr. Honecker, said his liver cancer is so advanced that he would not survive the two years the trial is expected to last. Dr. Schneider said Mr. Honecker's health would allow him to attend a trial only three hours a day, two days a week. Opposition to the trial is expected from left-wing Germans and from comrades from the former East bloc such as Mikhail Gorbachev. "The German Democratic Republic [East Germany] was a state which was a member of the United Nations," Mr. Gorbachev said in a recent television interview. "A German state has the right to do everything to defend itself. It seems to me there is an attempt to make it appear as if the German Democratic Republic had not existed, as if it had not had borders, as if it had had no right to protect its national security." Many were surprised when Der Spiegel's Mr. Augstein emerged as one of the trial's most prominent critics. Perhaps more than any other publication, Der Speigel exposed the crimes of East Germany's communist regime before its collapse in November 1989. In a commentary titled "Justice Farce," Mr. Augstein described Mr. Honecker as a "puppet who existed at Moscow's grace." "Honecker was as independent of the Kremlin as Herod the Great was of Emperor Augustus in Rome," Mr. Augstein wrote. "He had a slack rope. But it only would have taken a snap of the fingers and another ruler would have taken power in the despotic regime." This article is copyright 1992 The Washington Times. Redistribution to other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American Cybercasting Corporation. For more information, send-email to usa@AmeriCast.COM