Former officials of Stasi, the East German secret police whom the Bonn government intends to bring to trial, could also face legal action initiated by the victims of Arab terrorist attacks or by their relatives, according to legal experts at the Justice Ministry interviewed recently.
Proceedings could be initiated, for example, against former Stasi agents believed to have provided shelter and probably training for the Palestinian terrorists who massacred the Israeli Olympics team in Munich in 1972.
While the German authorities intend to prosecute ex-Stasi officials for training German terrorists, they can also be prosecuted for training Arab gunmen who may have been involved in bloody attacks in Germany or other countries, the experts said.
The victims or their families can act either as individuals or as members of groups such as Jewish communities or other organizations, the experts said.
One way is to join the proceedings against Stasi officials as accessory prosecutors.
That procedure has been used frequently at Nazi war crimes trials, where the accessory prosecutors lend legal or moral weight to the state’s case.
The scope and degree of Stasi involvement in terrorist outrages has yet to be clarified. But security experts say the former East German organization played an indirect role in many of the most spectacular assaults over the years.
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