A court in Berlin has sentenced a former member of East Germany’s notorious secret police to 10 years imprisonment for murder.

The Berlin Regional Court on Monday sentenced a former East German secret police employee to ten years in prison for a murder at a border crossing in 1974.

The ruling was the first-ever conviction against a former employee of the Stasi, communist East Germany’s secret police, for actions carried out while in service.

The court found ex-Stasi officer Martin N., 80, guilty of murder for killing Pole Czeslaw Kukuczka at close range as he sought to escape to the West through Berlin’s Friedrichstrasse border point.