DOPING-FINAL VERDICT EXPECTED IN GERMAN DRUGS TRIAL

BERLIN, Dec 6 (Reuters) - The first trial to put former East Germany's
doping policy under the spotlight should come to an end with a verdict
on Monday.

Prosecutors have called for a 14,400 marks ($8,592) fine for Bernd
Pansold, the last of six officials of the swimming section of Berlin
club SC Dynamo to be judged.

Pansold, 56, was the club's head doctor. Like the others on trial he
is accused of having caused bodily harm to female swimmers by giving
them banned drugs in the 1970s and 1980s.

Two of those accused, doctor Dieter Binus and coach Rolf Glaeser, have
been convicted by the court and fined.

The other three -- coaches Volker Frischke, Dieter Krause and Dieter
Lindemann -- saw the cases against them dropped after paying fines.

Under German law a court can decide to drop charges in return for
payment of a fine if it believes the case does not justify the time
and resources needed to bring it to a verdict.

The trial opened amid great media attention last March.

Earlier, several officials had admitted that the former East German
government, seeing sporting success as a vehicle to promote communism,
used systematic doping. But the matter had never come to court.

A similar trial of five swimming officials from another Berlin club,
TSC, started and ended last August. Three were convicted and fined.
The other two accepted fines in return for the case against them being
dropped.

Coaches from other sports, notably athletics, are currently under
investigation and more trials should follow.

Prosecutors also hope to bring sports officials in the former East
German communist party leadership to book for doping. Investigations
are under way and charges are expected to be filed soon.

A study by historian Giselher Spitzer released this week said some
10,000 athletes were given banned performance-enhancing drugs such as
steroids under the state-ordered programme which started in 1968 and
lasted until German unification in 1990.

Some 500 athletes who used to compete for East Germany suffer from
illnesses related to the taking of drugs, including cancer, liver and
heart diseases and gynaecological damage, Spitzer wrote.

Checked-by: Rich O'Grady