An Italian truck driver and member of the Italian Communist Party, Benito Corghi, was shot at a crossing point in August 1976; the GDR government was severely embarrassed and, unusually, offered an apology.[151] In one notorious shooting on 1 May 1976, a former East German political prisoner, Michael Gartenschläger, who had fled to the West some years before, was ambushed and killed by a Stasi commando squad on the border near Büchen. The Stasi reported that he had been "liquidated by security forces of the GDR".[152]