 Dr Walter Linse completed a PhD in law and worked as an economic law expert for the Investigative Committee of Free Jurists (UfJ) in West Berlin. In July 1952, he was preparing an international law congress in Berlin that was to focus on the manifold violations of law in the GDR. On July 8, 1952, the Ministry of State Security (MfS) dispatched a commando of hired criminals to kidnap him and bring him to East Berlin. His kidnappers caught him near his home, bundled him into a car camouflaged as a taxi and shot him in the leg to break his resistance. Linse was brought to the central MfS remand prison in Berlin-Hohenschönhausen. Erich Mielke, then Minister of State Security, signed the "detention order" issued on the same day. Linse's interrogation, frequently at night, lasted until early December. During this time, he was confined with two cell-mates who were both informers and, in addition, the cell was bugged. Otherwise, Linse was completely cut off from the outside world. The only toilet was a single slops bucket – as was common practice for all prisoners at that time – and consequently the cell stank horribly. On December 3, 1952, Linse was handed over to the Soviet State Security Central Investigation department, taken to their main remand prison in Karlshorst and subjected to months of continued interrogation. Finally, in September 1953, a Soviet Military court in Berlin sentenced him to a firing squad and he was executed on December 15, 1953 in Moscow. For decades, the Soviet authorities refused to allow any investigations into his case. In 1996, when at last his case was re-opened, the Russian authorities declared him totally innocent and cleared his name. |
