EAST GERMAN PRISONERS

Press, Volume XCIII, Issue 28002, 23 June 1956, Page 9

EAST GERMAN PRISONERS

19,000 Free After ‘Re-Examination’ (N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) (Rec. 10 p.m.) BERLIN. June 22. The East German Communist regime has proclaimed a bier clean-up of its entire system of justice, which has long been attacked in . West Germany as a regime of naked political terror. The East German Government has claimed that it has released more than 19.000 persons from prison in recent weeks as a result of a re-examination of sentences.

The Communist Party, at the same time, published a sharp criticism of the Justice Minister (Mrs Hilde Benjamin), the Supreme Prosecutor (Mr Ernst Melsheimer) and the Minister of State Security (Mr Ernst Wollweber), for alleged malpractices. Mrs Benjamin published a signed article in which she admitted minor faults, but denied that harsh sentences imposed by her judges had been “wrong or systematically exaggerated.” A report published in “Neues Deutschland” said Mrs Benjamin and Mr Melsheimer had allowed “daydreaming theorists to talk them into believeing that even offences of a negligent cyclist or motoring against traffic laws were expressions of worsening the class struggle.” In Bonn, the West Berlin anti-Com-munist Free Jurists’ Organisation questioned the truth of the announcement that more then 19,000 East German prisoners had been released. The organisation said the announcement that only 11 persons convicted of war crimes by Soviet military tribunals or East German Courts were still being held, was incorrect. A group of at least 35 prisoners handed over by the Russians last putumn still detained, they said. A much larger group of political convicts handed to the East German authorities several years ago was also still detained.

Of political convicts sentenced for crimes against the State, only those belonging to the Social Democratic Party were released. The rest were freed only if their prison terms were under four years.