Israel asked the United Nations today to issue a demand to Syria that it extradite Nazi war criminal Alois Brunner, who has been sheltered in Damascus by the Syrian government for almost 30 years.
In a letter to Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar, Israel’s Ambassador to the UN, Binyamin Netanyahu, said that since Syria has steadfastly refused extradition requests from France, West Germany and other countries, Syria should “hand over Brunner to an impartial international tribunal that will try him for his crimes against humanity.”
Noting that Brunner, a former captain of the Nazi SS,”is responsible for sending more than 120,000 Jews from Austria, Germany, France, Slovakia and Greece to their deaths in Nazi concentration camps,” Netanyahu said that after the war Brunner escaped to Syria, “posing as business associate of Adolph Eichmann, using the alias Georg Fischer.”
During the war, Eichmann, the Israeli envoy continued, “was so impressed with Brunner’s ‘efficiency’ that he put him in charge of the Zentralstelle fuer Jued Auswanderung, the infamous bureau responsible for ‘cleansing’ Nazi Germany of Jews.”
Last week, the German weekly Bunte interviewed and photographed Brunner in his villa in Damascus. Despite this and other evidence, the Syrians continue to deny that Brunner is living in Syria. “Brunner’s recent interview with Bunte reveals that he was a ‘close security adviser’ to Rifaat al-Assad, the brother of Syria’s ruler” Hafez Assad, Netanyahu told the Secretary General.
The Israeli envoy charged that by shielding Brunner, Syria violates the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which Damascus signed in 1955. The Convention, Netanyahu noted, calls for punishing persons guilty of genocide and demands their extradition.
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