HQ Raid Angers East Germany’s Ex-Communists

BERLIN —  East Germany’s former Communists claimed today their democratic rights were trampled when a small army of police raided their headquarters in a fruitless hunt for criminal evidence.

About 150 armed lawmen burst into the headquarters shortly before midnight Thursday to search for clues to allegations that the party had recently funneled $65 million into the Soviet Union.

However, a Berlin prosecutor said the raid at the party’s Berlin offices turned up no such information.

The former Communists have renamed their organization the Party of Democratic Socialism.

The raid was the latest action by the united German government in its effort to sift through the remains of the authoritarian government that ruled East Germany for 40 years.

There is widespread belief that Communists in the often corrupt former government squirreled away billions in property, cash and valuables in the waning days of their rule.

The raid came on the first anniversary of Erich Honecker’s ouster as Communist leader of the hard-line government.

Gregor Gysi, the current party leader who also holds a Parliament seat in the united Germany, denounced the raids as illegal and an infringement on the democratic rights of party members.

He claimed that persecution of former Communist Party members, whose current party now professes a form of democratic socialism, would only serve to radicalize them.