East German officials convicted

Boehme (left) and Lorenz were senior politburo members

Two former East German officials have been sentenced to probation for their role in the deaths of three people shot as they tried to cross the Berlin Wall.

Hans-Joachim Boehme, 74, and Siegfried Lorenz, 73, were convicted of failing to prevent the shootings in the 1980s.

The court said the former leaders were responsible for instructing East German guards to shoot and kill anyone trying to cross the wall.

The three victims, killed between 1986 and 1989 were aged 20, 24 and 25.

A third member of the Communist Party politburo, Herbert Haeber, 73, was found guilty on a similar charge in May but released under a former East German law that allows for a conviction without a sentence.

Last death

About 1,000 people were killed trying to flee the communist East Germany to the West after the wall went up in 1961.

The prosecution selected three cases for the retrial of Boehme and Lorenz, who were cleared in 2000 after a court said they could not have stopped the shoot-to-kill policy. That ruling was overturned and a retrial was ordered.

Both men will be on probation for one year.

The victims were Michael Bittner, 25, shot in 1986, Lutz Schmidt, 24, shot in 1987 and Chris Gueffroy, 20, the last person to be killed, nine months before the wall came down in November 1989.

East Germany's last communist leader, Egon Krenz, was jailed for six years in 1997 after being convicted of being responsible for a shoot-to-kill policy employed by border guards. He was released last year.