HONECKER TO BE FREED TO AWAIT DEATH

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, January 13, 1993                   TAG: 9301130154
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A8   EDITION: METRO  
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE: BERLIN                                LENGTH: Short
HONECKER TO BE FREED TO AWAIT DEATH
Germany's most sensational trial since the Nazi war crimes tribunal in Nuremberg collapsed Tuesday when a court halted the prosecution of former East German leader Erich Honecker because he is dying of cancer.
The 80-year-old Honecker, who ruled as Communist Party leader 18 years and remained an unrepentant Marxist throughout his two-month trial, could be freed as early as today.
Honecker has said he wants to go to Chile to join his daughter, who is married to a Chilean. But court-appointed doctors have found that his liver cancer may be too advanced for him to travel. They have given him three to six months to live.
Honecker faced manslaughter charges in the deaths of 13 of the 350 East Germans killed while trying to flee to the West across borders guarded by soldiers under shoot-to-kill orders, as well as by land mines and self-firing guns.
The Constitutional Court in Berlin ruled that continuing the trial of a man "so marked by death" would violate "the basic right of the complainant to respect for his human dignity."
- Knight-Ridder/Tribune

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB