Back From Moscow

The clenched-fist salute and the pinched smile were familiar, but the performance was mere bravado. Erich Honecker, 79, once the leader of the defunct German Democratic Republic, made a small show of defiance as he walked out of the Chilean embassy in Moscow after seven months spent in asylum there. Only a small crowd of supporters were on hand as he left for Berlin, where he can expect to stand trial on 49 charges of manslaughter. The indictments stem from the deaths of East Germans trying to flee across the old inter-German border, a zone that Honecker ordered fortified with mines and trip-wired "scatter guns" in the 1970s. The communist leader's extradition was the result of months of arduous negotiations between Germany, Russia and Chile, and it finally came about after personal talks between German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and Chilean President Patricio Aylwin. The trial is unlikely to start until October at the earliest, but many fear it could prove politically messy, even stirring up unwanted memories of the Nuremberg trials. Meanwhile, newly discovered East German military files reveal that at least 350 people, double the previously known number, died while trying to reach the West. According to German television, the former communist regime covered up some of the fatalities by telling families of the victims that their loved ones escaped successfully.