After 34 years, inmate refuses to leave jail

59-year-old man was convicted of murder in what was then East Germany

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updated 8:26 a.m. ET Oct. 21, 2006

BERLIN - A 59-year-old German man who has spent the last 34 years in jail has turned down offers to be let out, an official said Saturday.

"He rejected an offer to leave in 1992," Thomas Melzer, a spokesman for the Brandenburg state justice ministry, told Bild newspaper. "We can't do anything if someone sentenced to life in prison doesn't want to leave."

The man, identified only as Gerold H., was convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment in 1972 when the area was part of communist East Germany.

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German prisoners have no obligation to agree to leave jail before their sentences have been completed.