at the Berlin Wall, at the main East-West border, or via the Baltic Sea. The exact number of fatalities is difficult to estimate (see Inner German border deaths) and an unknown number were seriously wounded and later arrested. Victims of this system also include border guards who were shot by fugitives and their supporters. In Berlin alone, 190 people were killed in the course of 28 years, and the last-known victim of the Berlin Wall was Chris Gueffroy. Schießbefehl occurrences at the border were also recorded by the Bundesgrenzschutz (BGS or Federal Border Guard, the West German border guards), the West Berlin police, and by the military police of the Allied Forces. Files were collected in the central registration office at Salzgitter. Reunification After German reunification in October 1990, the Todesschützen ("death shooters": soldiers who allegedly killed those attempting to escape East Germany) were brought to trial in the federal courts in what were known as the Mauerschützen-Prozesse ("Wall shooters trials"). Also, high-ranking officers of the Border Troops and the East German National Defense Council were charged in court. The verdicts generally agreed that even the common soldier should have and must have recognised that the East German border laws were so fundamentally in conflict with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which East Germany had signed and ratified, that they were not law at all but formalized injustice, and thus the soldiers ought to have disobeyed their commanding officers. See also Postenpflicht References External links BBC: E German "licence to kill" found Cold War history of Germany East German law GDR Border Troops German words and phrases Gun politics