Career
Kurras is known primarily for fatally shooting unarmed student Benno Ohnesorg during a demonstration on June 2, 1967, outside Deutsche Oper against the state visit of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran. Kurras was acquitted of any wrongdoing in a series of controversial trials, due to which he became a prominent hate figure of the left-wing German student movement of the 1960s as well as the German New Left. The incident is considered pivotal for the rise of left-wing terrorism in West Germany during the 1970s, culminating with the Movement 2 June and the Red Army Faction.
In 2009, it was revealed that he had also committed espionage for the East German Stasi during the 1950s and 1960s, but due to the publicity Kurras was receiving for his trials, the Stasi cut its ties to him.
West Berlin Police officer Karl-Heinz Kurras approached the East German communist regime in 1955, expressing a desire to defect. He was convinced to remain in West Berlin and to work as an informant for the Stasi.
As a spy, he handed over confidential information from the West Berlin police to the East German authorities. After he had been acquitted of any wrongdoing when shooting Ohnesorg in 1967, the Federal Court of Justice subsequently ruled that the first court had failed to consider all the available evidence and ordered a new trial.
Kurras was acquitted for a second time and thus became a hate figure for increasingly radicalized West German Marxists.
In 1971 he rejoined the police force and was subsequently promoted to Detective Chief Inspector (German: Kriminaloberkommissar). He retired from the Berlin Police in 1987. He boasted, "Anyone who attacks me is destroyed.
Office.
Lights out. You can tell from that." (German: "Wer mich angreift, wird vernichtet Aus Feierabend So ist das zu sehen")
In May 2009, it was revealed that Kurras was an informant for the East German secret police, the Stasi. There is no evidence however of a link between the shooting of Ohnessorg and Kurras" espionage activities. In January 2012, an investigation carried out by federal prosecutors and Der Spiegel magazine ruled that the shooting of Ohnesorg was not in self-defence and was certainly premeditated.
Newly examined film and photographic evidence also implicate fellow officers and superiors, proving that the West Berlin Police covered up the truth in order to protect one of their own.
Additionally, medical staff who carried out the post mortem on Ohnesorg were pressured to falsify their report. However, for reasons of double jeopardy, charges were deemed unlikely to be refiled.