After the German reunification Honecker stayed in a Soviet military hospital near Berlin. Then he fled to Moscow with his wife, to avoid prosecution over charges of Cold War crimes. The German government said he should be prosecuted because 192 East Germans died trying to leave East Germany. After the Soviet Union broke up in December 1991, Honecker went to the Chilean embassy in Moscow, but was sent back by Boris Yeltsin's government in 1992. The trial started in early 1993, but Honecker was released due to ill health and on 13 January of that year moved to Chile to live with his daughter Sonja, her Chilean husband Leo Yáñez, and their son Roberto. He died of liver cancer in Santiago, Chile on 29 May 1994.