Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld was today turned back at Damascus Airport and sent back to France. Klarsfeld had come to Syria to demand the extradition of one of Adolf Eichmann’s former aides. Klarsfeld said upon his return that he had brought with him to Damascus official documents showing that former SS Hauptsturmfuhrer Alois Brunner was living in Syria under the name of George Fischer.
Half a dozen countries, including West Germany, Austria, France, Greece and Israel, have issued international arrest warrants against the former deputy chief of the SS Jewish Department. In France, a military court sentenced him to death in absentia in 1954.
The 70-year old Brunner served as one of Eichmann’s deputies first in Vienna, then in Berlin and Salonika and finally in Paris. After the war he was on the Allies list of most wanted Nazi war criminals and is believed to have lived for the last 20 years in Damascus.
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