BERLIN, July 23 (AFP) - A retrial began here Friday for two members of the East German leadership charged with murdering three people at the former border of East and West Germany in the final years of the communist state.
Hans-Joachim Boehme, 74, and Siegfried Lorenz, 73, were cleared by a Berlin court in July 2000, but a higher court in Leipzig overturned that ruling in November 2002 and ordered a retrial.
The Leipzig court said the two were jointly responsible for the deaths of people trying to cross the border because they had not attempted to make the orders given to former East German border guards more "humane".
The new trial is the last of former communist officials over the so-called border shootings.
A verdict is expected on August 6.
Three men, Michael Bittner, 25, Lutz Schmidt, 24, and Chris Gueffroy, 20, were shot dead by guards as they tried to scale the Berlin Wall in 1986, 1987 and 1989 respectively. The Wall fell in 1989.
In 2000, Boehme and Lorenz stood trial with Herbert Haeber, also a former East German Communist party official.
Haeber was also cleared, then ordered to face a retrial which took place in May this year when he was found guilty of responsibility for the deaths because he took part in a political decision in 1985 to keep the country's borders sealed.
However, the court chose to impose no sentence on him.
In August 1997, former East German leader Egon Krenz and two other top Communist Party officials were convicted of issuing "shoot-to-kill" orders to guards at the Berlin Wall and the border which divided Germany for 40 years.
Krenz, who was sentenced to six-and-a-half years in jail, was in court on Friday to watch the proceedings.