WESTERN justice finally caught up with the legendary East German spy master, Markus Wolf, yesterday when a Dusseldorf court found him guilty of kidnapping and assault.
But Wolf (74), who ran East Berlin's foreign intelligence service from 1953 to 1986, walked free after the court imposed a two-year suspended sentence and ordered him to pay DM50,000 (about £18,000) to a Berlin children's charity.
A frown flashed across Wolf's well-tanned face when the judge read the verdict in a windowless basement courtroom packed with more than 80 journalists and well-wishers.
Wolf gazed silently with an icy stare for nearly two hours as the judge detailed the three Cold War kidnappings that she said he had ordered.
"This was a political trial," he said after the verdict. "Every agent in both east and west could be prosecuted for kidnapping. The charges were a pretext in order to reach a political judgment. I do not agree with the legal position of this court. During the Cold War I did what I did for my country."
The same court convicted Wolf of treason in 1993, sentencing him to six years in prison. But Germany's constitutional court later overturned the verdict, ruling that agents could not be punished for spying on the west from the east.
The latest charges relate to kidnappings carried out in the 1950s and early 1960s, which, the court ruled, were ordered by Wolf.
Wolf, who was known for much of the Cold War as "the man without a face", was both feared and admired by his enemies. He ran a network of 4,000 spies in the West, including an agent inside NATO's supreme command. The unmasking of one of Wolf's agents inside the Chancellor's office in Bonn drove Mr Willy Brandt out of office.
The end of Wolf's five-week trial comes just in time for the launch next week of his memoirs, Markus Wolf - Spy Chief in a Secret War, which is being published simultaneously in a number of languages.
In the book, Wolf claims that the CIA attempted to sign him up after the collapse of East Germany and that Chancellor Helmut Kohl's deputy, Mr Wolfgang Schauble, offered to quash prosecutions against him if he named his top 10 agents in the west.
Wolf alleges that a former deputy CIA director arrived at his house one day in 1990 bearing flowers and chocolates and offering him a new identity in California and a seven-figure cash sum in return for his co-operation.
Wolf, who retains the passionate loyalty of his former agents, declined all offers but secretly recorded the conversations - just in case.
