Strasbourg, 28/03/2001 (Agence Europe) - With a ruling passed down last week, the European Court of Human Rights rejected the appeals of three senior officials of the former GDR, including the President of the Council of State, Egon Krenz, and a former border guard, who disputed their sentences to imprisonment by the courts of the Federal Republic of Germany for having, through their participation in decisions taken by the High Instances of the GDR, been "the intellectual authors of voluntary homicides" (and, in the case of the border-guard, for having committed voluntary homicide by firing on a person trying to flee the GDR). According to plaintiffs these acts were not an infringement of GDR law and the sentences were a breach of Article 7(1) (no sentence without law) of the Convention on Human Rights. Basing itself on the fact that the law of the GDR recognised the principle of proportionality and that of the need to preserve human life, the Court stated that, on the contrary, the criminal law in the GDR allowed for such sentences. It notes that the first three plaintiffs were directly responsible for the situation that reigned at the border and even a simple soldier could not completely and blindly refer to orders flagrantly breaching not only the legal principles of the GDR but also internationally-recognised human rights and especially the right to life, which is the supreme value regarding human rights.