WEST GERMANY
Police toting submachine guns patrolled around Düsseldorfs courthouse last week, while a sharpshooter kept watch from a fourth-floor balcony and guards frisked everyone going inside the courtroom. The curtains were drawn to foil the aim of any potential sniper; in the dock, the defendant sat behind a bulletproof glass shield. Ordinarily, the charges would not have justified such stringent precautions, even though Karl-Heinz Ruhland, 33, had confessed to bank robbery, car theft, breaking into city halls and stealing passports. Authorities feared, however, that he might be rubbed out by his former associates before he could testifyand he had played roughly...
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