World Notes

From 1961, when the Berlin Wall went up, until it tumbled down in November 1989, more than 190 East Germans were killed trying to escape. When Heinz Kessler, former Defense Minister of the now defunct communist regime, planned to flee to the Soviet Union last week, however, he was merely arrested, along with former Prime Minister Willi Stoph and two other ex-leaders, Fritz Streletz and Hans Albrecht.

The contrast was ironic. As members of East Germany's National Defense Council, its highest security agency, the four had approved a 1974 order requiring guards to shoot to kill anyone crossing the border to the West. After months of investigation, Bonn found all four men jointly responsible for the deadly order and charged them with inciting manslaughter.

The arrests came after police received a tip that Kessler was planning to escape aboard a Soviet military aircraft. German authorities, under pressure to bring former Communist leaders to justice, were embarrassed last March when Erich Honecker, the former party chief, was spirited away to Moscow by the Soviets, ostensibly for health reasons.