Former officer with East Germany’s secret police goes on trial for a border killing in 1974

BERLIN (AP) — An 80-year-old former officer with communist East Germany’s secret police, the Stasi, has gone on trial over the killing of a Polish man at a border crossing in divided Berlin 50 years ago. The defendant, whose name hasn’t been released in keeping with German privacy rules, is charged with murder before the state court in Berlin. He didn’t speak as the the trial opened on Thursday, but his lawyer said that her client contests the accusations against him. The case goes back to 1974, when the Polish man allegedly took a fake bomb to the Polish Embassy to try to force his exit to West Berlin and the Stasi decided to feign authorizing his departure.