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Former German official on trial
Posted: Tuesday May 02, 2000 10:43 AM
BERLIN (Reuters) -- The trial of a former senior East German sports official accused of playing a leading role in the communist state's systematic doping policy in the 1970s and 1980s opened on Tuesday. Prosecutors said Manfred Ewald, who headed the powerful East Germany Gymnastics and Sports Federation from 1961 to 1988, organized doping with the approval of the highest level of the GDR government. Ewald, 73, and sports doctor Manfred Hoeppner, who also appeared before a Berlin court on Tuesday, stand accused of contributing to bodily harming a total 142 sportswomen, most of them swimmers and athletes. Hoeppner, 65, headed from 1974 the Working Group on Supporting Means. "Supporting means" was the official terminology used by East German officials to designate doping. The hearings started some 20 minutes late because of the crowd of journalists and television crews outside the building. Prosecutors said the trial might last only one day and immediately come to a verdict, which prompted fears that many of the victims would not be able to testify in court as witnesses. A spokesman for the prosecutors confirmed only one day of hearings had been scheduled but said more could be added. The indictment charges that the 142 women suffered lasting side-effects from the intake of anabolic steroids, such as hormonal disturbances and the development of male characteristics like excessive body hair or muscles. A few women still suffer from menstrual and gynecological problems, it says. Several former East German officials have admitted the communist state, seeing sport as a vehicle to promote communism, used systematic doping from the 1970s until German unification in 1990. Coaches and doctors have already been brought to court but no official as senior as Ewald, who was also president of East Germany's National Olympic Committee, has yet been judged. In the previous trials, those accused were either given suspended jail terms, fined or had the charges against them dropped after agreeing to pay a fine.
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