A former Stasi officer in Germany has been sentenced to ten years in prison for murder.
The murder he was found guilty of took place almost 50 years ago, when a Polish man was shot to death in connection with an escape attempt from East to West Berlin in 1974.
The convicted man is 80 years old today.
The case is believed to be able to change how murders committed during the communist era are handled. At least 140 people were killed when they tried to cross the Berlin Wall between 1961 and 1989. So far, however, guards and other East German police officers have been prosecuted for manslaughter and not for murder.
